


Retreat

by holograms



Series: whiskey tango foxtrot [3]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Complicated Relationships, Fighting and making up, Hurt/Comfort/Hurt, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, References to Canon Events, Smut, Trauma For Everyone!, implied (past) child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:33:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24989869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/pseuds/holograms
Summary: Hawkeye shows up at Frank's door in the middle of February, 1954.Some things have changed after the war, some haven't. They should probably talk about it. They don't.
Relationships: Frank Burns/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Series: whiskey tango foxtrot [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764913
Comments: 64
Kudos: 56





	1. winter

**Author's Note:**

> part iii of this series but you don't need to read the others, i guess

Hawkeye shows up at Frank’s door in the middle of February, in the middle of the night.

Frantic knocking wakes Frank. He had just dozed off after an awful shift at the hospital. At first he thinks he’s dreaming because nobody has ever called on him besides the landlord and on one occasion, the elderly lady across the hall because she needed help setting up her new telephone, but the knocking just gets louder and someone shouts his name ( _Frank Burns, I know you’re in there!_ ) and no, it can’t be — that voice has to be part of a dream, too — but he runs to the door and on the other side of it, there he is: Hawkeye Pierce.

They stand there, looking at each other, silent. Frank is aware that his mouth is hanging open. He closes it. Very stupidly, he says the only thing he can think of: “It’s _you._ ”

 _You,_ who Frank thinks of every time his hand shakes when he picks up a scalpel; when he sees the perfect shade of blue; when he’s feeling especially lonesome.

Hawkeye pushes in past him without asking. Frank shuts the door and locks it, trapping them inside together. Hawkeye is already making himself at home, setting his bag on the floor and flinging his coat on the sofa.

“Nice digs,” Hawkeye says and _ah,_ there’s the first slight. He must find it hilarious that Frank has fallen into squalor and is living in a crappy apartment where the living area, dining area, and kitchen are just one square room. It was described as _antiquated_ when Frank was looking to rent it, as though a fancy word can make it charming.

He catches Hawkeye eyeing the water stain on the ceiling.

“How did you find me?” Frank hasn’t lived at his old address for over a year. Not that Hawkeye would have known that address, either. Hawkeye never wrote to him after he was sent home (nobody did). But it’s fair, because Frank didn’t send him any letters, and he knew where he was.

(Frank wrote him, though — a stack of unsent letters sit bundled in a drawer, because he was too afraid of a reply and more so, afraid of getting them returned to sender with _RECIPIENT DECEASED_ stamped on the front.)

“I asked around for a ferrety-looking surgeon,” Hawkeye says, but then he shakes his head, like he’s summoning the ability to be serious. “I got your information from the VA.”

Oh, right. Thinking of himself as a veteran makes Frank feel a hundred years old because when he thinks of a Vet he thinks of someone who served in the other wars. Not theirs, which wasn’t even technically a war but a _police action._

Hawkeye sits at the table where Frank eats his meals. It isn’t worthy of the name _dining table_. There are only two chairs. This is the first time anyone has sat at it other than himself.

“Do you need anything?” It isn’t what Frank had intended to say — he planned something more scathing — but it didn’t feel right.

Hawkeye looks from the place where he’s staring at the wall, up at him. “Something to drink.”

Frank gives him a glass of tap water, and a few crackers on a plate. He won’t let it be said he’s an entirely bad host. Hawkeye doesn’t touch the crackers but he sips the water. He wrinkles his nose at it, but then drinks more.

Frank can’t stop looking at him. He knows it’s Hawkeye but he hardly recognizes him as the memory he left behind in Korea. His hair has gone a silvery ashen gray, there are more lines around his eyes than Frank remembers, and there’s something haunting in his gaze that would frighten Frank if it didn’t make him feel so sad.

Frank tries to think of how long it’s been since he saw him. A year and a half? Long enough to change.

Hawkeye taps the glass.

“Do you have anything else? They didn’t have refreshments on the plane.”

Frank knows just the thing. From the cabinet he gets an unopened bottle of gin, presents it to Hawkeye.

“Unless you’ve had enough of the swill,” he says.

That earns him a rueful laugh from Hawkeye.

“Never.”

Frank dumps the rest of the water into the sink and gives it back to him. “Sorry. I don’t have martini glasses.”

“This will do just fine.” He opens the bottle with a knife, sets the cork aside, and pours to Frank’s measure, a lot _._ He drinks it slow, savoring, closing his eyes and licking his lips. “Much better.”

Frank lowers himself into the other chair, next to him.

“I got it because…”

Because it made me think of you? Because I hoped you’d show up one day and I wanted to give you a reason to stay? Because I figured you wouldn’t want to be sober? Because it makes me remember warm humid nights and the comforting hum of the still and the smell of fresh juniper?

…Hawkeye keeps staring at him, too.

Frank wonders if he’s changed. It’s hard to notice the little differences when you see yourself in the mirror every day.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Frank says. They way they left things—

—unfinished.

“I’m here now,” Hawkeye says and yes. He is.

Frank’s bed is pushed with one side along the wall, the way his bed was as a child. His bedroom is small but it doesn’t matter when he always sleeps alone. But now here’s Hawkeye, stripping off his clothes — not olive drab, but jeans and a black cardigan and a plain navy blue t-shirt — down to his socks and polka-dotted underwear. He shivers. It’s cold, the radiator on low (too much of an expense, and nothing feels as cold as sleeping in a tent during a Korean winter).

Frank sits on the edge of the bed and examines Hawkeye before him. He’s too skinny and the hair on his chest is gray but other than that, he is the same, with those slouched shoulders and long legs and cute belly.

He’s dying to touch him.

He does. Runs his hand down his side, over his ribs, rubs at his hipbone with his thumb. Asks, “Are you alright, Hawkeye?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m just tired.”

He’s still dishonest in the same way.

Frank lies down first, and then Hawkeye, and while it’s a snug fit in his full-size bed, it’s terribly spacious compared to a cot. Hawkeye turns off the lamp on the end table and once they’re engulfed in darkness, he turns over and presses against Frank.

He isn’t prepared when Hawkeye kisses him. Frank had thought a lot about _this_ since he came home — if he’d still want it (yes), if he’d still like it ( _yes) —_ but how dare Hawkeye waltz into his life when he’s just begun to make peace with it? With everything?

Frank pulls away from it. Hawkeye makes a soft noise and his mouth tries to find his again, but Frank puts a hand to his chest. It strikes him odd when he expects to feel the chain of dog tags.

“Rest,” Frank tells him.

“No,” mumbles Hawkeye, stubborn as ever, but he doesn’t say anything else. Frank wishes he would. He’s missed his voice.

Hawkeye’s breathing becomes slower, and then he’s softly snoring. Frank stays awake a long time, just listening, and remembering.

Frank is rudely waken an hour before his alarm is set to go off, which is one of the worst injustices of the world. At first he thinks it’s a burglar — there had been a break-in at the store across the street last month — and then he thinks of how his gun is in a shoebox at the bottom of his closet, disassembled (which is the safest for him), but the perpetrator and noisemaker is only Hawkeye, hunched over his dresser.

“Sorry,” says Hawkeye. “I got up to pee and I didn’t want to sleep anymore and it was daylight so...”

“You decided to snoop.” Because that _is_ what he’s doing. Caught him red-handed rifling through his _things_. Frank sits up to look at him, better now in the daylight and with the clarity of morning. It hadn’t been the night making Hawkeye appear haggard. He looks _rough._ His robe is a size too big — dark teal, not the usual maroon — and he’s pale, which make the dark shadows under his eyes even more apparent. He looks exhausted, the kind of tired sleep won’t help.

Hawkeye goes unaware of the observation. He continues his intrusion of privacy, unashamed by his crime.

Frank steps into his slippers and goes over to him, and annoyance becomes livid when he sees that Hawkeye is going through his box of mementos that he keeps hidden away.

“A love note from a certain Major.” Hawkeye waves a folded piece of paper before setting it aside and plucking out an oak leaf pin. “Major.”

Frank goes to grab it but Hawkeye is faster, his hand moving out of the way.

“Stop this at once!”

Hawkeye smirks, obviously having no intention of doing so. He holds up Frank’s dog tags, jiggling them, and then opens the box with his National Defense Service Medal inside.

“They gave me one of these, too,” Hawkeye says. “What a souvenir. I went to the war and all I got was this lousy medal.”

“It’s to distinguish that we helped our country in a time of national emergency.”

Hawkeye laughs, short, _ha!_ “ _Our_ country, Frank? How did it help us, specifically?”

“To keep the commies from coming over here and…” It’s a moot point. There’s no need to argue. Clearly, Hawkeye’s liberal-leaning viewpoints haven’t changed.

Hawkeye shakes his head at him, takes a handful of pictures from the box. “What do we have here?”

The first few are shots from around the 4077th. Frank took them during the first month he was stationed there, when he thought he’d have someone to show them to when he came home. Hawkeye flips through the photos fast, like he doesn’t want to look at them too closely, but then he lingers on one of the outside of the Swamp.

“Home away from home,” he says, somehow sounding wistful and resentful at the same time.

Frank nods. He only looks at the pictures when he needs to remind himself that he would rather be home than over there.

Hawkeye goes through the rest. There are pictures of random things. A jeep. The mountain range next to their camp. An odd looking flower he’s never seen anywhere else. An ambulance. A goat.

There are pictures of people, too. One of himself on the first day at the unit, newly minted as second-in-command and with so much to look forward to. His favorite photo of him and Margaret together, they’re both smiling and have their arms wrapped around each other. A moment captured when they loved each other most. One of just her, standing next to a cherry blossom tree in full bloom, taken when they managed to get leave to Tokyo at the same time. A group shot of him, Hawkeye, McIntyre, and Blake in their Class As. Frank remembers the day it was taken. The Colonel had wanted one of only the surgeons and they all bickered and complained and O’Reilly had pleaded, _please, sirs, can I please take the picture before the war ends?_

“Ah, there’s my youth.” Hawkeye smiles, the way he used to, but it quickly fades. “Poor Henry.”

“Yes.” Frank did mourn for the man, but anything else he would say would probably be taken as disingenuous.

Hawkeye spends a few more moments reminiscing before going to the next photo. It’s of himself, sitting crossed-legged on his bunk and flipping off the camera. It was taken after they were _together_. Frank had one more shot on the roll and he pointed the camera at Hawkeye and said, _hey, Pierce._

He had only that photo of Hawkeye and one other, the next in the stack. Frank had taken it without Hawkeye’s knowledge. It could have been taken any day — in their tent, Hawkeye sitting in the high-backed chair with one leg crossed over the other, eyes closed, martini in hand, as close to bliss as he could be.

An indiscernible emotion passes over Hawkeye’s face. He places the pictures back in the box, then the other items, closes it.

“There are some things I like to remember,” Frank says. “It wasn’t all bad.”

“Enough of it was.”

Before Frank can figure out how to reply, to ask, _do you regret us?_ Hawkeye’s stomach growls.

“When did you eat last?”

“I had pretzels at the airport bar in Portland,” says Hawkeye.

“So, yesterday afternoon? And before that?”

Hawkeye shrugs.

“Oh, good grief.” That’s just like Pierce to wake him up in the middle of the night and expect him to make breakfast, too. But for some reason he’s a sucker for Hawkeye, and he slips on his robe and stomps into the kitchen.

Hawkeye trails behind him, sits at the small table. The glass is there from their middle-of-the night chat. There’s a little bit of gin left in it and Hawkeye finishes it in one swallow.

“Drunkard,” mumbles Frank as he starts up the coffee pot. He then cracks eggs into a pan and puts bread in the toaster. He fixes enough for both of them.

“What are you doing?”

Frank holds up the spatula. “Cooking. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

Hawkeye gives him a smarmy grin. “I mean work, Frank. Last time we spoke you said you had a job at the VA hospital in Fort Wayne, but you’re living here in Indianapolis.”

Ah, yes. He had not been in the best frame of mind when he called the MASH from home, and he might have stretched the truth a bit. “It didn’t work out.”

“And you’re living alone.”

“Like I said, it didn’t work out.”

Hawkeye drums his fingers on the table. “When I called the Army to track you down, they didn’t know of a Lieutenant Colonel Frank Burns. However, there was a Major who had been discharged after service.”

Frank bites the inside of his cheek. “I might have lied.” He should have known better than to try and impress Hawkeye. He wasn’t a rank-chaser. He probably would have thought more of him if he got busted down a rank or two.

“Why were you looking for me?” He divides the eggs into two plates, and then turns to look at Hawkeye. “I distinctly remember you saying that our _fling_ would not go on beyond the war.”

Hawkeye has another of those sad looks from last night (this morning?) and he starts to say something but they both startle when the toast pops out. Which is just as well — Hawkeye looks relieved to be rescued from the topic.

Frank butters it generously and puts a piece on each plate, and then sets them down on the table.

“Scrambled. Since I know that’s how you ate them, before.”

Hawkeye looks at the plate like it’s garbage. “That was the only way they cooked them there.” He looks up at him. “Are these powdered?”

“You _saw_ me, you ungrateful—”

“I’m kidding, jeez. Can’t you take a joke?”

“Oh. Well.” Frank pours them coffee — he has to get another mug from the cabinet in addition to his usual one that’s in the drying rack. “Sugar?”

“Yes, babe?”

Frank rolls his eyes and then adds sugar to both, anyway. He takes his seat and starts eating. Meanwhile, Hawkeye is still glaring at his.

“Eat.” Frank points his fork at Hawkeye. “Doctor’s orders.”

Hawkeye sticks his tongue out at him, like a small child, but he picks up his fork and stabs the eggs, brings them to his face and smells them.

“If you don’t want it, fine,” Frank says. “Starve. I don’t care.”

That gets Hawkeye to take a bite, even if it is aggressively. He chews once and stops, meets eyes with Frank, then looks down and continues eating.

Frank feels a bit of glee, like he got a stray dog to eat out of his hand. Hawkeye must’ve been hungry because he’s eating quick, eating with his fork with one hand and holding the toast in the other.

“I’m working at one of the hospitals in the city,” Frank says. “I sold my practice and moved.”

“And got a divorce.”

“Astute observation.” Frank looks down to where his ring finger is bare. “I wasn’t back stateside a week when Louise decided she preferred her life without me around.”

And with what happened after, he can’t say that he blames her.

Hawkeye actually stops stuffing his face, sets his fork down. “I’m sorry, Frank.”

“That’s all you have to say? Not _we’re all better without you around?_ ”

In lieu of speaking, Hawkeye drinks his coffee.

Because he would’ve have left Frank too, if Frank hadn’t done it first.

Frank changes the subject. “How long have you been home?”

“A little over six months.”

He counts backwards. “You were there until the end.”

“Lucky me.” Hawkeye gestures to his half-eaten meal. “I’ve been home six months I’m still not used to proper coffee or edible food. I expect everything to taste awful! Six months and when I blow my nose I think there’s still dirt from over there coming out. Six months and there are memories that are just as vivid as when they happened. Six months and I’ve lost another half a year of my life to the damn war.”

“Coming home wasn’t easy for me, either,” says Frank. He lost everything: his family, his home, his job, his future. “Readjusting to civilian life is an ongoing process. When I hear a helicopter I still have the instinct that I should be running to an operating room.”

“Me too.” Hawkeye frowns. “It was different after you left. It… It was really bad, Frank.”

That was one of the thoughts that plagued Frank for months after his return. What was happening to them? There had been so many close calls, what if their good luck ran out? It would have taken only one bomb to level the O.R. The news about the war was always a glorified account of what was happening on the front, so he never would have known the fate of a certain mobile hospital…

“I’m glad you made it back,” Frank says. “I’ve worried about you. I thought of you often.”

Every day. All the time. He thought of how vulnerable Hawkeye allowed himself to be, openly admitting that he was terrified. He’s had a recurring dream where Hawkeye is dressed in bloodstained scrubs and tells him, _you weren’t supposed to leave—_ and he wakes up every time before he can ask, _did you really care—?_

Hawkeye doesn’t say anything but his eyes flicker downward. Frank looks for himself, sees that he had unknowingly covered his hand with his. Hawkeye looks uncomfortable, so. Frank slides his touch away, back to himself, but then he thinks he might have misread Hawkeye’s expression because he looks more hurt.

“Did everyone else…” Frank doesn’t know how to ask the question. “Did they make it home?”

“Mostly, yes,” Hawkeye says. He picks at his food, eats another bite. “Klinger is still over there, I guess. I haven’t heard from him in a couple of months. He was helping his wife look for her family.”

“Wasn’t he married to someone in the states?” Frank remembers, because that oddball wore a wedding gown and had a ceremony via the radio.

“She broke it off with him, and then he fell in love with someone from over there. It’s ironic. The one who would’ve done anything to leave stayed behind. But that’s love for ya.” There’s a slight smile as Hawkeye talks. “Klinger really turned it around. He was an excellent company clerk, even though we all were worried he wouldn’t be able to fill Radar’s tiny boy wonder shoes.”

Frank’s chest twinges. ”What happened to Radar?”

Hawkeye must see the distress on his face, because he waves his hand at him. “Nothing like that. He just went home to take care of his family’s farm. He…grew up a lot.”

He has that distant stare again, like he’s lost, somewhere else. Frank waits until he snaps out of it.

“There were only a few who were there from the beginning until the very end,” Hawkeye says. “Klinger, Father Mulcahy, Margaret…” His eyes start to water. “Me.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Frank says. He feels guilty — why was he allowed out when they weren’t — and slightly jealous that they had each other through it.

“It was better that way.” Hawkeye clears his throat, wipes his face. “The surgeon who replaced you was actually a proper doctor. Charles is pompous and stuffy but annoyingly good at his job and all in all an alright guy. It made everyone’s jobs easier not having to constantly fix your mistakes or listen to your grousing. Nobody missed your presence.”

“Did you?”

Pressed by honesty, Hawkeye looks uncomfortable again. Frank can tell there’s a quip at the end of Hawkeye’s tongue, but he reins it in. He thinks it’s less fun for Hawkeye when it’s expected.

“Margaret and I talked about you once in a while,” Hawkeye says. “We missed you on cold nights.”

Frank doesn’t doubt it. Last night Hawkeye had pressed up against him, stealing his warmth. But surely, he didn’t travel all this way just to use him as a heater.

“Are you going to eat that?” Hawkeye asks, but takes Frank’s toast before he gets an answer.

“How is Margaret?” The only way Frank consoled himself with the loss of her is the knowledge that she was happier without him.

“She’s fine,” Hawkeye says, through a mouthful of toast. “She’s the toughest of us all. She’s still hooked up with the Army, her one true love.”

“I expected her to be settled at home with her husband.”

Hawkeye makes a _pfft_ sound. “They didn’t last more than a few months. She was much happier after she divorced him. She realized she didn’t need a man to complete her life.”

“…oh.”

“Don’t even think about it. You don’t have a chance.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

Hawkeye smiles at him. “Margaret and I became close friends.”

“Close?”

Hawkeye’s smile grows, his eyes going squinty. Frank wants to inquire further but he doesn’t really want to know.

“If you’re so _close_ with her,” Frank says, “why aren’t you paying her a visit instead?”

Hawkeye shrugs. “She has better things to do. She’s head nurse at a hospital in Texas. I don’t want to bother her.”

There’s something else there that he isn’t saying. He’s…

“What about your bestie, Hunnicutt? I’m sure he’d love to be bothered by you.”

“Beej is home and doing well.” Hawkeye finishes his coffee and pushes the mug towards Frank, his way of asking for more. Frank sighs but gets up and goes to the coffee pot.

Hawkeye talks while he fixes it. “We’ve written each other since we’ve been home and talked on the telephone a few times, but he’s busy catching up on time he missed with his family. They’re expecting a second kid in the summer.”

Frank sets the coffee in front of Hawkeye, sits back down. “He certainly didn’t waste his time.”

“Yeah, so. I’m giving him space. I don’t want to remind him of, you know. He’s trying to get away from it.”

Trying to be noble, as usual.

“How about McIntyre?” He always could give Hawkeye company.

“Good ol’ Trapper John,” Hawkeye says, and Frank notes a bit of bitterness in his voice. “I called him up a few weeks after I was back. I gave him hell for not telling me goodbye, but then we were laughing together two seconds after. He’s still married and working at Boston General. It was nice to talk to him, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t know how to talk to him when it wasn’t…” He runs his hand through his hair. “I didn’t know what to tell him, anyway.”

Frank draws his own conclusions. “So, I’m your last resort.”

“It’s not like that.”

“You’re only here because you have nobody else to go to,” Frank says. “You’ve isolated yourself from all your friends—”

Hawkeye slams his fist on the table, upsetting the salt and pepper shakers. He’s so _angry_ — Frank flinches, braces himself to be slapped across the face (old habits never die), but then Hawkeye lets out a miserable sound and—

“I _missed_ you!”

—and it would be wonderful if Hawkeye didn’t sound so _furious_ about it.

“Yes,” Frank says. “You missed me because I kept you warm. Or is it because I’m an easy target for your insults?”

“I wish that’s all it was.”

“Then _what_ is it?”

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye says. “I just—I wanted to see you.”

It’s all rather unfair, but Hawkeye has never had much consideration for him. Frank wishes he wouldn’t look at him like that, like he knows he’s misplacing his hope in him. It’s unfair for Hawkeye to act like he gives a damn. It’s unfair for Hawkeye to expect Frank to tell him how to be a person again when he’s had to figure it out alone and still doesn’t have an answer.

Frank sighs. “What do you want, Hawkeye?”

“What do I want?” Hawkeye asks, harsh — it feels like a slap. “I want to know why we’re talking about other people. What about _us?_ Did you leave your inclination for kissing men behind in Korea? Or have you deluded yourself into forgetting it happened?”

He’s tried to forget but he couldn’t, just like he couldn’t forget the other things from over there, like how blood would pour from patients onto the floor and seep into his boots on a long day of surgery.

“We used to fuck,” Hawkeye says, and then adds, “a _lot_. And it was pretty damn good. You even had me go in you that one time—”

“I don’t—”

“Shut up! I know you liked it. All of it.”

 _Damn_ that Hawkeye and his talented hands and wicked mouth and that stupid lanky body. Frank has tried to reason with himself that it was temporary insanity because of the war, but he’s thought of those amorous rendezvouses with Hawkeye — quickies wherever they could have them, his mouth warm at his neck, fevered desperate mutterings — and yes. It didn’t make much sense then and he isn’t sure if it does now, but it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. He liked it. He liked him.

“So, is that what you missed?” Frank asks. “Nobody to…to lay with back home?”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“Then what is it, Pierce? You fly across the country, barge back into my life without any explanation, crawl into my bed and kiss me—”

“You say that like you aren’t starving for it.”

If they were in Korea, this would be when they forgo talking and grind on each other instead. But they aren’t over there—

Frank stands up. “I have to leave.”

Hawkeye catches up with him in two strides, blocks his path. “Where are you going?”

“I have a job,” Frank says. “I have to make money so I can give half of it away to my ex-wife.”

Hawkeye gawks at him, sputters, “But I—!”

“I can’t drop everything for you,” Frank says. “If you thought I would kowtow before you because you decided to grace me with your presence, you are sadly mistaken. I’ve been without you for a year and half. I can survive one day more.”

And then Frank pushes past him.

Telling Hawkeye off feels good for only a few moments. Frank feels the compulsive need to tell him _sorry please forgive me I’m an idiot_ but he’s trying to be stronger than that. But he sure does feel bad when Hawkeye hovers quietly in the doorway as he shaves and brushes his teeth.

He avoids looking at Hawkeye’s face to discern how he feels.

Hawkeye moves with him to the bedroom, sits on the bed. Frank pauses as he goes to undress but he figures what the hell — Hawkeye has seen him bare many, many times, so. He drops trou to change into his pants and button-down shirt.

In the mirror, he catches Hawkeye looking. He remembers when Hawkeye told him that he has a _nice ass._ He quirks his brow. A blush creeps across Hawkeye’s face like a wildfire.

Frank tucks in his shirt, buttons his pants.

“I’ll be back in ten hours. Stay, if you wish,” Frank says. “I don’t have anything to steal.”

If looks could kill, Hawkeye would have him lying dead on the floor.

Frank reaches out towards Hawkeye. His hand shakes, closes it in a fist.

“See you around, Hawk.”

Frank thinks he shouldn’t have left Hawkeye by himself. He is not well. He was still quick with jokes and a bit rough around the edges but there is something else, like he’s _afraid_ —

He almost calls his own number to check on Hawkeye, but he doubts he’d answer the phone if he is still there. Frank worries — he wasn’t exactly kind. He should have asked what Hawkeye meant when he said things got _bad_. How much worse could they have been? Hawkeye had tried to talk to him about it…

Frank gets through the day. He does his rounds, scrubs up to remove a tricky gallbladder, and then spends the rest of the shift putting in central lines.

The sun has set by the time he gets home. He takes his time climbing the stairs, stops outside his front door. Once he goes inside he’ll know if Hawkeye stayed, but now it could be one way or the other. Until he opens the door and looks inside, there’s the possibility that Hawkeye stayed.

The lights are off and that gives his stomach a lurch. He flips them on, sees the dishes (two) from this morning in the sink, unwashed. Confirmation that Hawkeye was there and he didn’t imagine it in a fit of lonesomeness.

He puts his bag to the side and takes off his shoes and there, next to his boots and tennis shoes, is a pair of well-worn leather boots that aren’t his.

—and yes, in his bedroom, half illuminated by moonlight filtering in from the window is Hawkeye, asleep in his bed.

He stayed.

On the end table is a coffee mug and the bottle of gin. It’s past half empty.

Frank sits on the edge of the bed. Hawkeye is too deep into sleep to notice and so Frank takes the chance to look at him. He’s curled up on his side, his hand tucked under his face, the same way Frank remembers him sleeping. His hair is silver in the moonlight. It suits him. His hair is as thick as before, the jerk (Frank noting his own hairline sits back a bit further than it used to), but his silly eyebrows are even more faint now. Frank admires the slope of his nose and that sinful mouth. He isn’t really handsome but he is beautiful, in a way.

There’s a crinkle in his forehead and his eyes are moving underneath his eyelids — he’s probably dreaming.

Frank gently kisses him on the forehead, just because he can. Because he can do it without the fear of them being seen and because Hawkeye sought him out.

Hawkeye takes his time waking up but when his gaze settles on Frank he takes a sharp inhale and sits up on his elbows.

“Frank?” He has that daze of having gone to sleep drunk and waking up still in the middle of it. “What’re you doing?”

“What I want to do,” he says, and he kisses him on the mouth.

It’s like fighting, push and pull against each other (like two armies, warring for territory). Hawkeye gasps hot, open-mouthed, shuddering. Their noses bump against each other. Frank threads his fingers through Hawkeye’s hair. It’s soft, and smells like his shampoo, he took a shower sometime during the day. He didn’t shave, however, and his day-old beard scrapes against his face.

They fall into their old ways fast. Hawkeye kicks the blankets aside and lies back and Frank has to cling to his quickly evaporating composure because Hawkeye is looking up at him like he’s actually seeing him — nobody has _seen_ him in so long. He runs his hand under Hawkeye’s sweater, splays his hand over his stomach, covers his neck and face in kisses in the way he knows annoys Hawkeye but he doesn’t care, not when he has him again. He doesn’t think Hawkeye minds either because he’s panting and saying, “please, I need—”

Frank understands. Because he needs it, too. He recognizes that he’s astray like him. Starved for touch and for answers and direction. Something to prove that he isn’t crazy.

Hawkeye lifts his hips and shoves his sweatpants down his thighs. Frank takes him in hand, strokes him firmly, getting him swearing, _fucking hell_ , and then he’s trying to undo Frank’s pants but he’s fumbling, which is unlike him. Frank does it himself, moves his clothes just enough to free himself, and then Hawkeye drags him down to lay next to him and—

After, Hawkeye reaches across Frank, grabs the mug. Frank watches his throat bob as he drinks and closes his eyes like he’s found serenity.

Frank stops him when he goes for more. “Save some for later.”

“I’ll buy more,” Hawkeye says, and gets the bottle anyway, pours himself another shot of it. He does enjoy a post-coitus swig, but Frank wonders if there’s another reason.

“I’m going to clean up,” he says, and leaves Hawkeye alone with his regret and his drink. He normally showers after a shift at the hospital but he got sidetracked — and he needs a moment to think.

Hawkeye, of course, does not grant him that. He follows Frank into the bathroom and sits on the closed toilet lid.

Frank covers himself. “Privacy!”

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen,” says Hawkeye, dismissively. “And besides, we’ve showered in wooden stalls with less privacy than a high school locker room.”

“But now we are in civilization and I—”

“You have your rights _blah blah_ I know.”

Frank closes the shower curtain and turns on the water.

Hawkeye talks to him the entire time, shouting over the water, talking about nothing. _I took a late flight because planes are cramped enough already, and there are so many germs — don’t forget to wash behind your ears. How do birds know how to migrate? Do you like fishing? Frank, the wallpaper in here is horrid. My dad got a new boat. Do you like sailing? I think being a pirate would be pretty neat._ Endless chatter. Nonsense.

When he’s finished, Hawkeye has a towel ready for him. He rubs his hair with it and then dries his body, wraps it around his waist, and Hawkeye follows him then, too. He puts on something warm and comfortable, complete with soft wool socks, and heads into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Hawkeye must have expected them to go back into bed.

“Having dinner, like a normal person.” Frank gets out leftovers from the night before. It’s difficult to fix meals for just one person so there’s always enough for a couple days. He takes out enough to heat for both of them.

Hawkeye leans against the counter. His sweatpants hang on his hips. There’s a bit more lucidity to him — he’s sobered up, some.

“Tell me about your day,” he says. “Did you do any cutting?”

“One cholecystectomy.” Frank looks over at him. “I’ll have you know the patient survived the operation.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, well. You were thinking it. Hand me some plates? That cabinet, there.” Hawkeye gives him two, and Frank continues as he serves up the food. “I don’t often do the serious stuff. I sometimes get called to cover in the ER, but I try to leave it for the newbies and the guys who get paid more than me.” Too many trauma cases. “And besides, someone once told me I was a national endangerment as a surgeon.”

“That _someone_ kinda sounds like an asshole,” Hawkeye says. “Even if he’s right, and thinks central Indiana is better off.”

Frank shrugs, brings the plates to the table. Hawkeye reluctantly follows but sits back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, talks instead of eating.

“There isn’t much need for surgery in Crabapple,” says Hawkeye. “My dad has been handling most of it. I’ve had my hands inside enough chest cavities to last me the decade and the next.”

“Sure.” Frank cuts his meatloaf, takes a bite. “So, you’ve been doctoring since you’ve been back? Not just lying about, pickling your liver?”

Hawkeye scowls at him. “I didn’t come here to be judged by you.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I told you. I missed you.”

“There’s more than that.”

“I was thinking of becoming a race car driver. I figured I could do the Indianapolis 500 with no issue after driving jeeps in a war zone.”

Frank shakes his head at him. “You’re insane.”

Hawkeye smiles, a little forced. “So they say.”

He suspiciously eyes his food. He takes some with his fork and sniffs it. It must pass his inspection because he puts it in his mouth. He swallows, knits his brow together.

“Did you really make this?”

“…yes.”

Hawkeye goes _huh_ , then: “It’s good.”

Frank wiggles his shoulders, gloating. There are few things he’s done to merit a genuine compliment from Hawkeye (that he has legible handwriting, he gives a good massage, has pretty eyes, is compatible in bed with him, can do an alright cushing stitch, is good at getting under his skin).

“It’s good,” Hawkeye says, “and so were the eggs you made this morning, as well as the brownies on the counter that I assume you made, too.”

Frank looks over and yes, there are a few brownies missing from the cellophane-wrapped tray.

“I learned how to cook from my mother,” Frank says, answering the unasked question. “I was close with her, you know, and I’d a lot of spend time with her in the kitchen. So, I picked it up. I never let on with Louise how much I knew, but once in a while I would bake stuff when she was mad at me.”

“Did it help?”

“Sometimes.” That’s how it works. Somebody is upset with you, and you appease them until they talk to you again.

“I don’t really remember my mom cooking,” Hawkeye says, “but I remember when she didn’t anymore. I knew something was wrong because dad made me breakfast. And then he never stopped. He made me french toast every morning for three weeks, and sometimes for dinner, too. He made whatever I wanted. We’d eat on the floor in the living room on a blanket, like a picnic.”

Again, Frank is confounded at the idea of having a father that is loving.

“What did your father say about your visit to the Midwest?”

“Nothing.” Hawkeye is avoidant, pushing green beans around on his plate. “I’m a grown adult. I don’t need a chaperone.”

“…does your father know where you are?”

Silence.

“You should call him,” Frank says.

“No, it’s too late there and—”

“Call. I’m sure he’s worried about you.”

At least that’s what he assumes what a good father would do.

Putting Hawkeye on a guilt trip works because he sighs and throws his hands up and says, “ _Fine_ , I’ll do it.” He gets up from the table, flops down on the sofa and picks up the telephone.

“Crabapple Cove, Maine,” he tells the operator. While he waits to be connected he looks over at Frank. “I’ll pay your phone bill.”

“I don’t need your charity,” Frank says, even though he had been cringing at the long distance charges of call from Indiana to middle-of-nowhere Maine.

Hawkeye is about to say something else but then he turns his attention back to the call.

“Hey, Darla, it’s Ben Pierce. Oh, I’m fine, I’m just doing some traveling.” He laughs, that charming laugh of his. “My dad’s being dramatic, you know him… Ha, I bet. Can you ring him for me? Thanks.”

Hawkeye covers the mouthpiece and looks to Frank. “Now the town rumor mill will get started. _Oh, what has that Pierce boy done this time?_ ”

“Always a troublemaker,” Frank says. “I imagine your town has been used to your antics since you were a child.”

“You have no idea—” Hawkeye’s face lights up. “Hey, dad, it’s your son.”

Frank watches as Hawkeye’s bright expression fades.

“ _Shh_. Dad. I’m alright. Listen, hey — stop worrying. I’m okay. It’s not like _that_ again.” Hawkeye rolls his eyes. “Yes, I would tell you if I needed help.”

Frank should leave the room to give Hawkeye a moment alone with talk with his father, but instead he pretends to not pay attention when really he’s wishing he had a second phone so he could listen to the other side of the conversation.

“I’m in Indiana. Visiting a…someone.” There’s a long pause and then Hawkeye says, “Frank. Yes, him. Yes. Please don’t ask.”

So, Hawkeye has told his father about him. Frank doesn’t know how to feel about that. He wonders how much Hawkeye has said. That they were adversaries during the war, or _everything_? The Pierces are quite close—

“I left a note, I told you I was going away for a while. I _know_. You didn’t have to — why did you call him?” Hawkeye’s father must be saying something Hawkeye doesn’t like because he frowns. “Whatever. Could you let him know I’m alright and not at the bottom of a river somewhere?”

There are several things Frank thinks of. One: if he had used that tone with his own father, he would have been backhanded, even as an adult. Two: _who_ is Hawkeye talking about? Three: why does Hawkeye’s comment seem less caustic than usual, and makes Frank feel ill?

Hawkeye starts up again. “Because I don’t _want_ to talk to him. And for the love of god, don’t tell him where I am. It wouldn’t be a good case for my sanity.” He laughs, slight, but then the expression on his face changes from annoyed to distressed.

 _“What?_ Oh jeez, dad, you didn’t need to bring Sid—” Hawkeye looks over to Frank and then away quickly “—you didn’t need to bring him into it, too.”

Frank has given up hiding that he’s listening, so he sees when Hawkeye falters. Hawkeye’s hand shakes and he puts it to his forehead, closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath and lets it go.

“I’m telling you I’m fine. Better than I’ve been in a while. I just had to get away, after… I know. I _know_. Dad— please— let me talk— Yes, fine, alright, I’ll write him if it’ll keep him from coming here. Damn.” He sighs. His shoulders slump. His voice breaks a little and his eyes tear up. “Please, dad, don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything like that.”

Like what? Frank strains his ears, as though he could hear Hawkeye’s father on the other end. Hawkeye scowls at Frank, turns away from him and lowers his voice.

“I didn’t call to argue with you,” Hawkeye says into the phone. “I just wanted to let you know I’m alright. I promise.” Pause. “I mean it this time.” Another pause. “I would never put you through that.” Pause. “I don’t know, soon.” Longest pause. “I love you, too.”

And Hawkeye hangs up.

And then calmly comes back to the table and aggressively eats the rest of his dinner.

“You don’t want anyone to know you’re here,” Frank says. He understands. He wouldn’t want to it to be known either, if he weren’t himself and was with him instead. But.

Hawkeye looks up from his meal, and his eyes are too _too_ clever, and he takes too long to speak. From experience, Frank knows this is dangerous — when Hawkeye is taciturn it gives him longer to think.

He finally says: “I told my father.”

“But you don’t want BJ to know.”

Judging by Hawkeye’s expression, Frank knows he guessed right.

“I never told BJ about us,” Hawkeye says, “and I don’t ever plan to tell him.”

“You could tell him we’re _friends_ ,” Frank says. “But no, I suppose that would be a lie because we aren’t friends, as you’ve always reminded me.”

Hawkeye scoffs, but he doesn’t deny it.

“Just what I thought.” Frank tilts his head at him. “But what I find most curious is that you aren’t talking to the human personification of a golden retriever. Your best friend. Did you make a pass at him and you got rejected? Did he find you less interesting when he was away from you? Are you jealous of his wife and baby to be—?”

Hawkeye jumps to his feet. Frank has a passing thought that he might hit him, but his choice of weapon is his wit.

“Don’t talk about what you don’t know anything about,” Hawkeye says, his voice sharp. A warning. Taunting Frank to fight back.

“Then tell me,” Frank says, because he really does want to understand what has Hawkeye so frantic, but then Hawkeye kisses him instead, and.

They stumble into the bedroom. Frank thinks Hawkeye is going to pause to booze up again but he doesn’t — he’s too busy prying kisses from Frank and rubbing him through his pants.

They strip down together in a hurry and Hawkeye is very eager to get down between Frank’s legs and suck him without any preamble. He’s quickly reminded that Hawkeye gives the best head he’s ever had. When women have done it they don’t seem to enjoy it very much, but for Hawkeye, giving it is as pleasurable as receiving. He is vulgar and immodest and Frank loves it. Hawkeye hasn’t lost any of that talent and it’s too good and Frank has to back him off because it’ll end way too soon if he doesn’t.

Hawkeye looks up at him through his dark eyelashes. “Are you going to fuck me or do I have to beg?”

“I should make you beg,” Frank says, “you’ve been quite insolent,” but he doesn’t want to wait for it either.

Hawkeye brought lube with him, so maybe he did come here with the intention for this, but Frank appreciates his forethought. He coats his fingers with it and doesn’t bother to warm it before he touches Hawkeye between his legs. Hawkeye hisses at the cold and calls him a _savage bastard_ but his breathing quickly goes uneven and his thighs flex with restrained want. Frank stops when he starts to press himself on his fingers. Frank scolds him for being selfish. Hawkeye complains but if he’d just wait a damn second—

He presses in all at once and Hawkeye lets out a choked noise but he takes it, baring his teeth and arching into it. Frank pulls out to thrust in again and then grinds deep and slow until Hawkeye makes a content noise and says, “yes, finally.”

It’s a good with him as it had been. Better, because they don’t have to worry that someone will overlook a hanger on a door and walk in on them, and because they have nothing to lose. Hawkeye must realize this too, because he’s forgone his usual chatter and instead is making all sorts of filthy noises, grunting and moaning, where anyone would know what they’re doing if they were overheard.

Frank is really glad his bedroom doesn’t share a wall with his neighbor.

Hawkeye bends one of his knees, like he’s trying to draw him in further, get him in the right place. He closes his eyes, wets his lips. “You’re annoying as hell but this makes up for it.”

Frank laughs. “Likewise.”

He adds more lube to both of them and then goes back inside him. He snaps his hips forward and Hawkeye makes a sound best described as a growl, digs his fingers into the fleshy part of Frank’s hips. Frank trails a hand down Hawkeye’s front and wraps it around his dick. He’s ignored it until now but he’s hard, leaking down his length, and close to coming.

Hawkeye is pretty like this, all desire and no shame. He is needy, trying to thrust into Frank’s hand, but Frank won’t let it finish like that — he’s waited too long for it to be rushed — so he leans in to kiss Hawkeye on the mouth, gentle, sweeter than he’d normally allow.

“I missed you, too,” Frank says, and that pushes Hawkeye over the edge — him gasping like it takes him by surprise as he spills into his hand. He’s still shaking through it as Frank presses his face against his shoulder, clings to him as he follows.

And then Hawkeye shoves Frank aside and retreats to the bathroom.

Well then.

That’s just like Hawkeye to escape when something is too personal. Humiliated that he had an emotion in the moment with Frank — he can’t deny it, Frank saw it writ upon his face.

If he didn’t live on the second floor, Frank would think Hawkeye is climbing out the bathroom window.

Frank is suddenly uncomfortable — he’s cold, sticky from their release and lubrication, and doubt is settling in like a heavy fog. He shouldn’t have expected Hawkeye to feel any differently. He still doesn’t want anyone to know that he even _associates_ with him. He doesn’t expect Hawkeye to tell others they’re lovers, but at the very least he could claim him as a friend. He gets angry again about it all, Hawkeye can’t treat him like that—

—but then Hawkeye comes from the bathroom, and Frank decides it isn’t worth it.

Hawkeye drops a damp cloth on Frank’s chest without comment, and then picks through the pile of clothes on the floor for his.

“Thanks,” Frank says, wiping off some of the mess. He tosses the cloth across the room towards the hamper with other dirty laundry. It misses. He can’t be bothered to get up to put it away. He leaves it as a problem for the morning.

Hawkeye puts on the same sweater and sweatpants (sans underwear), and then lies in the empty space, turns off the lamp. Frank covers them with blankets and presses close against Hawkeye, nuzzling against his neck. Hawkeye used to allow him this sometimes — it had been an unspoken understanding. Hawkeye got some of what he wanted, Frank got some of what he wanted.

Tonight, however, Hawkeye goes tense and makes a displeased sound in his throat and Frank gets the message: back off.

So, he does.

Because it’s the right thing to do and because Hawkeye has been volatile and Frank thinks it’s best not to test him. It’s not the first time Hawkeye has pushed him away. Having Hawkeye a breath-width’s away is enough. Hawkeye wants him at least that much—

“I fucked Margaret.”

It feels as though Frank has been pushed off a cliff. His worst fear, known.

“I had sex with her,” Hawkeye says. “Did the horizontal tango. Had the dipstick check the oil. We—”

“You’re lying. Margaret would never,” says Frank. Never. Hawkeye _would_ do something that hurtful toward him, but not his Margaret.

“You were right,” Hawkeye says. “Her carpet doesn’t match her drapes. And she has a cute little birthmark, right there,” and he touches Frank at his inner thigh and Frank _knows_ it’s the truth because there isn’t any other explanation how Hawkeye would know such an intimate detail, and he starts thinking of how Margaret used to look at Hawkeye and, well.

Frank turns his back towards him, faces the wall.

“Oh, don’t be like that.” Hawkeye touches Frank’s shoulder. “You weren’t there. It was nothing against you. In fact, neither of us were thinking of you at all, Frankie.”

The put-on saccharine kindness twists the knife deeper.

“If you think that’s going to make me upset, it won’t,” Frank says. “I’m over her.”

“It sure seems like it.”

So, maybe he’ll never be _over_ her, but this feels like betrayal. Although, he can’t decide from who. Both?

“I’m not surprised it happened, with how both of you are obsessed with sex,” he says. “Degenerates.”

“Golly, I’ve been waiting for you to throw that word out.” Hawkeye is quiet for a moment, and then more serious: “It wasn’t like that with her.”

“I don’t _care_.”

“You don’t want to know the sordid details?” Hawkeye nips at his earlobe. ”Aren’t you curious how it happened?”

“No,” Frank says, but then he’s always going to wonder and it won’t change the fact it happened and damn that Pierce— “Yes.”

He feels Hawkeye smile against his neck.

“Margaret and I were on our way to the eighty sixty-third,” Hawkeye says, “but we got trapped by enemy fire and had to hide in an abandoned hut. Quaint little place.”

Frank imagines it. Korean dirt roads, dilapidated huts with crumbling walls. Wide open fields that you don’t dare walk across because of mines. Endless skies with white clouds.

Hawkeye continues, his voice a steady cadence. “I stupidly got injured and she had to help me. We argued — you know how we were. Nobody rescued us and we had to stay the night in that hut. I woke up to shelling and she was screaming at them, like they would listen to her command. I’m sure they would’ve if they heard her over the explosions. We were both so terrified and she was begging me to hold her and I needed it too, to have someone…”

“Yeah?” prompts Frank, when Hawkeye goes quiet.

“And then we held on to each other and one thing led to another…” Hawkeye lets out a short laugh. “Well, you can imagine the rest.”

He can. That’s the problem. He’s mad at both of them for doing it and he’s mad at himself for wanting to know _more_. Did she make the same noises as when he was inside of her? Did he kiss her the same overwhelming way? Did he make her come? It makes him twitch in interest but he’s too tired and too dismayed for it to go anywhere.

“Why did you tell me this?” Frank asks.

“Because I wanted you to know.”

Frank should tell Hawkeye to get out of his bed and out of his home and out of his life and go back from where he came. But he cannot — he wants to keep Hawkeye there and talk to him for hours and make sure he’s fed and happy (he misses that laugh…). No matter how cruel Hawkeye can be, he’s always honest. Frank would rather that than anything else.

“Why aren’t you with her now?” Frank asks. “It sounds like both of you enjoyed it.”

Hawkeye snorts. “Uh, no. We aren’t supposed to be together like that. Don’t get me wrong, the sex was great. Really great. Very—”

“ _Hawkeye_.”

“It was really fun. But the next morning…” He laughs, a strained _ahaha_. “She wasn’t the Houlihan I knew. She wanted something from me I could never give her. I understand why you two were well suited for each other.”

Hawkeye knows just how to hurt him. Frank always thought he and Margaret were soul mates, if there were such a thing — but he stopped believing in that around the same time Margaret stopped wanting him.

He stares at the wall in the dark. “What do you mean?”

Hawkeye sighs. “She was presumptive. The next morning she was all _darling_ this and _darling_ that and planning our futures together. She intended to divorce so we could be together.”

“I see. She would cheat on her husband with you but not with _me_?”

“You’re missing the point, Frank.”

Frank isn’t really sure what the point is, but it’s gone too far to ask. “Why didn’t you stay with her?”

“I’m not the marrying kind of boy.” There’s that joking tone to Hawkeye’s voice that feels too real. “Margaret was looking for someone to solve her issues and I’m…I’m not capable of that. Her and I would have never truly made it. We’re too different.”

Frank thinks Hawkeye and Margaret are actually too _alike_ , but he thinks both of them would think that’s an insult, so he keeps it to himself.

“If it had been another time, maybe it would have worked,” Hawkeye says, “but we just missed our chance.”

Frank wonders if that’s all they’ll ever have. Near misses.

“Well,” Frank says, “you turned to each other for comfort that one time, I can accept that.” Since turnabout is fair play. After all, he had been sleeping with Hawkeye while he was with her.

“My dear, stupid Frank. That wasn’t the only time.”

Frank isn’t surprised — he knew the truth, deep down. Both Margaret and Hawkeye told him _only this once_ when they first started.

“We fell into her cot together to celebrate when her divorce was finalized,” Hawkeye says, “and then several times after that when we couldn’t handle the fear and loneliness, or when we had an itch that couldn’t be scratched on our own. The last time we were together was after the ceasefire. We had operated through the night on the last of the casualties and I was… I needed…”

 _What?_ Frank wants to ask, but it feels like something he wouldn’t understand. Margaret had always told him he was _clueless_.

“I’m very fond of Margaret,” Hawkeye says, quietly.

It feels like a secret, something precious and raw. Frank is envious of that. He thinks he should have stayed in Korea. If he had, maybe—

—but Hawkeye is here now, and it doesn’t matter why or how, just that he is. Frank has learned not to question good things. They tend to disappear when he takes them for granted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE WE GO AGAIN anyway I'm going to continue this madness, the show has been off for nearly 40 years and here I am, putting this content out there. prepare for suffering.


	2. frost

Hawkeye is dreaming.

A pleasant dream, it seems. He’s smiling softly, murmuring something under his breath. Frank knows it’s probably a creepy to be watching but he’s trapped between the wall and Hawkeye, and it feels a bit cruel to disturb a man in the middle of a good dream. And he can’t be cruel when Hawkeye looks so nice in early morning sunlight.

But then Hawkeye’s breath hitches and he whimpers, distressed—

“No please no—”

“Hawkeye!” Frank grabs his shoulder, roughly shakes him. “Hey!”

And then he’s met with that shade of blue he hasn’t seen anywhere else besides Hawkeye’s gaze.

“You weren’t _there_ ,” Hawkeye says.

“I wasn’t where?” asks Frank. Hawkeye isn’t making sense, like he’s still half trapped in the dream.

“On the…” Hawkeye rubs his face. “It’s not important.”

They lapse into silence. It’s cold. There’s frost on the window, which means it probably snowed overnight. Frank nestles closer to Hawkeye, puts an arm over his middle. Hawkeye doesn’t resist. For as distant as he was last night, he’s certainly isn’t now.

It’s…good. Frank feels good. Wonderfully had. He forgot he could feel like this. And after the fog of nightmare clears, Hawkeye seems to be content as well. Not moody like he’s been since he’s shown up at his doorstep.

 _I missed you,_ he told him.

Three words to put his life back into a tailspin. Like a plane spinning out into the sea.

_Fond of Margaret._

_It was bad._

_I missed you._

“I have today and tomorrow off,” Frank says. “I’m not on call, either.” His first true day off in a week and a half.

He was not expecting to start it with a handsy annoyance in his bed.

“None of that.” He swats at Hawkeye’s hand that’s sneaking past his waistband. “Brush your teeth, and then shave. You’re starting to look like a bum.”

Hawkeye goes _urgh_ , and makes no attempt to move.

“Lazybones,” Frank says, and climbs over him. If his elbow digs into Hawkeye’s back, he deserves it.

On slow days in Korea, Hawkeye would sometimes lie in his bunk all day long. Sure, he was tired — they all were — but Frank thought it had more to do with melancholy. The war _got_ to Hawkeye in a different way. He had a more sentimental upbringing, so it stands to reason why he’d be emotional.

Frank thinks Hawkeye will do the same now, wallow in whatever self-pity he’s in, but Frank is on the second page of the morning paper when Hawkeye strides into the room clean-shaven and dressed in jeans and a blue flannel shirt.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Frank asks.

“Excruciating.” Hawkeye sits at the table. “I don’t have to do what you say, you know. You’re not my superior officer anymore.”

“You never listened to me, anyway.” Frank gestures to the counter. “There’s coffee if you want it, or I can fix you something.”

“I’m not hungry. Do you have anything else to drink?”

“Orange juice.”

“You know what I meant.”

Frank sighs. “I have some wine—”

Hawkeye wrinkles his nose. “Not in the morning.”

“Of course not, that wouldn’t make sense,” Frank says. “There’s some scotch, but it isn’t that good.”

But it’s good enough for Hawkeye, so Frank points to where it’s hidden away. He brings it back with a glass and pours himself a hearty breakfast.

“I see you’re still an alcoholic,” Frank says.

“I see you’re still a pest.”

“Showboat.”

“Stodgy weasel.” Hawkeye takes a drink, looks Frank up and down. “But you’re still a good lay.”

Frank tries to keep his reaction mild, when really all he wants is to drag Hawkeye back to his bed.

“How long do you intend to stay?”

Because he’s going to leave, eventually. Everyone does.

Hawkeye has one of those indiscernible looks, like where he doesn’t know if he should tell a joke or slaughter with an insult. He takes a long drink, delaying, but keeps his gaze fixed on his. Sets the glass on the table. Runs his forefinger around the rim.

Says: “I didn’t buy a return ticket.”

Interesting.

Frank forces Hawkeye to leave the apartment with him. He promises it’ll do him good. Hawkeye replies that he doesn’t trust his opinion of _good_.

Nevertheless, he goes, settling into the passenger seat of Frank’s car.

“Is this one of your two cars you bragged about?” Hawkeye sits with one of his legs folded in the seat. Frank thinks of telling him to get his foot off the upholstery but then he would know it annoys him and he’d never _not_ do it.

“Yes,” Frank says. “She kept the convertible. Which is fine, because the Buick is more sensible. This was new, before I went to Korea.”

“A lot of things were new before Korea.”

Hawkeye says it like it’s a set point in time. Before Korea.

“Tell me a story,” says Frank.

Hawkeye looks over at him. “What?”

“Tell me about something I missed.”

“Want to hear more about me with Margaret?”

Frank has been trying not to think about that. “Oh, fick. Never mind.”

Hawkeye tugs his knit hat down over his ears, looks out the window at the passing scenery.

“There was this soldier,” Hawkeye begins. “Real young. He was flown in with a lacerated aorta.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. There was so much blood. He couldn’t wait so I stuck my hand into his open chest right there on the helicopter pad. Pressed the aorta against the spine to stop the bleeding.”

“But what about paralysis?”

“So, you _did_ learn something in med school.” Hawkeye grins at him like a maniac, then shakes his head. “That was a risk I was willing to take. Beej had the idea to induce hypothermia to decrease the chance of paralysis. And so, that’s why I operated on the patient in a tub full of ice.”

“You always had a flair for the unconventional.” Frank can’t help the awe that creeps into his voice. After he came back and was faced with a difficult case he would have the thought: what would Pierce do?

Frank was never quite brave enough to follow through.

“The aorta was destroyed,” Hawkeye says. “He needed a transplant. We had to wait for another patient to die to harvest one, but we were pressed for time. I never thought I’d hope for someone to die faster.”

Frank parks, turns off the car. Hawkeye is quiet for so long that Frank glances over to him. He’s turned towards Frank, but focused on a point somewhere past him.

“What happened?”

That brings Hawkeye back.

“I saved the patient,” he says. “He wasn’t paralyzed. Everything was fine. Except for the man who died, but he was a hero, so I guess it ended alright for him, too.”

His tone is cheerful. His expression suggests otherwise.

“Hawkeye,” Frank says, “I’m sorry.”

But Hawkeye looks at him like he’s being silly. “You didn’t do anything.”

That’s the problem.

Taking Hawkeye shopping was a mistake. He keeps adding junk food into the basket (and then putting it in again when Frank places it back on the shelf), and declaring items Frank picks out as _gross_.

Frank never took his kids shopping, but he imagines they would be better behaved than Hawkeye.

Hawkeye is making such a ruckus that Frank will have to find a new grocer. If they aren’t kicked out, he won’t be able to show his face due to embarrassment. He looks away for a second to look at sweet potatoes and when he turns around Hawkeye is juggling apples, there in the middle of the produce section.

“Stop that,” Frank says, and he doesn’t expect Hawkeye to listen but he does, catching all three apples with panache.

“You’re no fun.” He sets the apples back into the bin. “At what age did you lose your fun, Frank?”

“I _am_ fun,” he says, but there’s an answer in his mind that says _I was about seven._ ”I’m just a different type of fun.”

Hawkeye snorts. “I’ll believe it when I see this theorized _fun_.”

“Oh, go can it with your beans.”

Again, Frank realizes that he and Hawkeye have nothing in common except their profession and some shared experiences in the war and that they enjoy sleeping together. He’d like to think that’s enough. Maybe it is. He’s heard that opposites attract — but they are something more than opposite.

…Hawkeye is staring at him.

“What?” he asks, maybe a bit too defensively.

“I was thinking,” Hawkeye says, “how odd it is to see you dressed in civvies, doing something mundane like shopping for lettuce.”

Yes. Displaced. Like those puzzles in the Sunday comics — _what doesn’t belong in this picture?_ Hawkeye, safe, here with him, and by choice.

“But you’re still very _you_.” Hawkeye flicks Frank’s chest. “You look like a dork. Who cares if their collar is ironed to go downtown on a Tuesday morning?”

“It’s Wednesday,” Frank says, and he touches where the collar of his shirt is folded crisp over his sweater, “and _I_ care.”

Unlike Hawkeye, whose clothes are spilling out of a bag in a corner of his bedroom.

Hawkeye picks up an apple, wipes it on his sweater, takes a bite.

Awful, rude. And yet, Frank wants to lick up the juice that dribbled on Hawkeye’s chin, he hates him, he makes him so damn crazy—

“Don’t care so much,” Hawkeye says, and then drops the apple into the shopping basket.

Like he’s never thought of that. Like not caring is simple. Like he’d know what to do once he stopped caring.

At the cashier, Hawkeye is first to pull out his wallet to offer to pay. Frank goes to decline because he isn’t that destitute (at the moment) but then he sees how much cash Hawkeye has and he figures he can afford it, and then some.

“Where did you get all that money?” Frank asks as the items are bagged up.

Hawkeye thanks the cashier and puts away the change without counting it. “The bank.”

Frank lowers his voice so only he can hear him. “You didn’t steal it, did you?”

“Yes, Frank. My hobby now is bank heists. I needed a thrill.”

“Oh, _you_.” Hawkeye is good at making him feel like a fool. Stupid moron Frank Burns, getting duped by Pierce again.

As the walk out, carrying a bag each, Hawkeye says, “Luckily, my dad is my boss and he pays me well. Plus I’ve got my Army benefits, and I might have dipped into my trust fund.”

He should have known. Hawkeye is snotty and entitled, just like all the other rich kids. He always received nice things from home in the mail. Clearly, his family has money.

“Am I more attractive now that you know I’m mildly affluent?” asks Hawkeye.

“Shut up.” Someone might hear him—

“Gold digger.”

Frank puts his hands on his hips. “I am not.” So what if Louise happened to come from a well-off background, and so what if he knew that before he pursued her?

Hawkeye grins at him, puts the bag in the back seat and shuts the door. “Sure, but if we marry, you’re signing a prenup.”

“Ha-ha.” Frank opens the driver’s side. “Let’s go.”

“Not yet.” Hawkeye shoves his hands into his pockets. “There’s somewhere else I need to go.”

Frank watches him cross the street and go into the liquor store.

Of course.

Ten minutes later, Hawkeye gets into the passenger seat with a box full of various bottles. He holds it in his lap like it’s precious cargo.

Frank decides his opinion is not worth the probable argument, so he puts the car in gear and drives back to his place.

Despite his judgment, he gets sloshed with Hawkeye that night.

Hawkeye starts him off with something he calls a rusty nail and that’s pretty tasty, and then he has another, and after that he drinks whatever Hawkeye gives him. Hawkeye is good at holding his liquor — he’s had a lot of practice — but Frank is not, and quickly gets silly drunk. It’s fine, though. They sit close together on the sofa and listen to the radio. It reminds him of the few good times they had before, when they found moments alone and enjoyed each other’s company and Hawkeye didn’t have to be performative in his disdain for him. Hawkeye is more like is usual self, he’s bright and talkative and he even laughs at some of Frank’s jokes. He always thinks Frank is funnier when he’s drunk, or maybe it’s that he’s more willing to admit it.

“I told you I’m _fun_.” Frank rests his chin on Hawkeye’s shoulder. “Tell me I’m fun, Hawk.”

“Alllright, buddy.” Hawkeye takes Frank’s glass from him and sets it aside. “I think you’ve had enough.”

“Hey—” Frank goes to protest but then Hawkeye puts his hand to the side of his face and kisses him and oh, okay, that is better. Hawkeye is good and makes his insides feel good and he tastes…good. Frank can’t summon coherent thoughts, not when Hawkeye is feeling him up and kissing at this throat. He’s happy, and he laughs — giggles — overwhelmed.

“Your dumb laugh,” Hawkeye says. “You’re a such a loon and yet I want you to—”

They get to the bed before it goes too far on the sofa. It’s warm, the liquor helps but they turned up the heat. Hawkeye spreads out naked on his front as Frank goes over his body. There’s a scar high on the back of his thigh that wasn’t there before.

“War wound,” Hawkeye mumbles when Frank touches it.

Frank kisses him there, at the small of his back, up his spine. Rubs himself on his ass, along the crease of it. Hawkeye lets out a broken _guh_ , and then turns over so they can rut against each other. It’s uncoordinated and not really doing much besides keeping them on edge.

“Have you been with anyone else recently?” Hawkeye asks him.

“Uh, not really.” He had a pity blowjob from his receptionist when he told her he got a divorce and was selling his office, but other than that, nothing. Nobody since Hawkeye in Korea.

Hawkeye reaches between them, runs his hand up and down his length. “No other men?”

Frank shakes his head. When he was stateside, he had thought — briefly — about seeking out a man, just to see if his attraction was exclusive to Hawkeye. He was never brave enough to act on it, but he found himself looking at men and considering if he fancies them. He didn’t feel the same about them as he does a beautiful woman. He doesn’t care much for the muscular guys that are called _handsome_ but maybe he’s just not used to thinking about men in that way. However, there is something about Hawkeye’s lanky lankiness and slim hips that he really likes. He just likes him, it doesn’t matter what he’s got between his legs, although he likes that, too.

Good grief.

Hawkeye keeps talking. “I did my fair share of fooling around when I came home. None of it was that great, though. I’d get off but it wasn’t satisfying and it would leave me feeling bad but also wanting more.”

Frank has had too much to drink to think about what Hawkeye means, what he’s saying. He wants to make it satisfying for Hawkeye, so he crawls down between his legs, wraps his hand around the base of him.

“Oh,” Hawkeye says, “you’re going to…yes, okay. Um. Anyway. There were a few times where my mind wanted to, but my body didn’t.”

“You’re not having a problem now.”

Not at all.

“It’s different,” Hawkeye says. “Good, even. Because…because…” and he’s talking too much—

Frank knows he’s doing a sloppy job but Hawkeye seems to enjoy it, or he’s too far gone to care. Hawkeye squirms under him, which makes his dick slide out of Frank’s mouth. Frank licks around the head and he’s glad he’s had some liquid courage because it’s almost too much, with the flushed hardness and heady scent and the _whining_ — that’s himself, he realizes.

He presses his face against Hawkeye’s thigh, catches his breath. Hawkeye touches the nape of Frank’s neck, cradles it gently, and tension Frank didn’t know he had evaporates.

“You’re doing a good job,” Hawkeye says. Encouragement. He’s always told Frank what he’s doing right (and what he’s doing badly) when they have sex. Communication. Margaret had told him he was good at taking orders—

Frank kisses the inside of Hawkeye’s inner thigh, bites where the skin is softest. The surprised gasp and jerk of his leg is very satisfying.

Smiling to himself, Frank directs his attention back to bringing Hawkeye off. He puts his mouth on him and when he swallows around him he tastes his leaking wetness. Not great tasting, but it’s sex. Hawkeye’s hand is still a heavy presence at his neck, stroking his fingers at his hairline and it feels really _really_ good even though he thinks Hawkeye doesn’t realize he’s doing it. Frank’s hair is bit longer than usual, and he’s still thinking of what Hawkeye said in passing earlier that day that it looked nice because it made him _less G_. _I_. which Frank hadn’t intended — he hasn’t had the chance to go to the barber and he isn’t skilled with using clippers at the back of his head, but now he’s considering keeping it like this—

Hawkeye gives him a warning, squeezing at his neck and letting out a breathy, “Oh—” but Frank figures if he’s going to do this he’s going to do it well, better than those women (or men?) from his hometown that he couldn’t find enjoyment with. Give him a reason to stay.

He’s so into it he doesn’t realize it’s over until Hawkeye is pushing him away and dragging him up to lie next to him. Hawkeye mumbles something and wipes at Frank’s face with the bed sheet.

“You look a mess.” Hawkeye kisses his cheek and then licks his face and that’s disgusting but fuck damn his cock is so hard he thinks he’s going to die—

“I like it when you talk filthy,” Hawkeye says, and oops he hadn’t meant to say any of that aloud—

Hawkeye returns the favor, and it takes only half a minute to come. He’s still shuddering through it when Hawkeye kisses him, his mouth sticky.

The arousal worn off, inebriation crashes in like high tide, takes him down with it.

He wakes up with a terrible headache. He groans because it’s too bright when he opens his eyes and he’s freezing — he’s not wearing anything — and then it registers that he is alone. There is nobody else taking up more than half the bed, nobody drooling on his pillow.

He sits up fast and it’s a bad idea because the room spins but no, he couldn’t have left—

—but there is Hawkeye’s mess in the corner of the room.

Frank flops back onto the bed. How stupid of him to worry. Even if Hawkeye did leave, it’s not like he would be anything to miss. They aren’t…

On the bedside table, there is an aspirin and a glass of water.

There’s a pang in Frank’s chest. He would attribute it to the hangover, but he knows better. It’s something systemic, like affection.

He takes the medicine and drinks all the water. He lies down with his eyes closed for a few minutes until he feels a bit better, so he puts on his underwear that’s on the floor (from where Hawkeye tossed it last night) and his robe, stumbles to the bathroom. He brushes his teeth, rinses his face. He feels a bit more like himself.

It’s then that he is awake enough to hear Hawkeye talking in the other room. It’s comforting, knowing he’s in close proximity. He hasn’t left. Frank listens to the rise and fall of his voice and…

…wait. Who could he be talking to?

Frank goes into the other room to see Hawkeye lounging on the sofa, on the telephone.

“Aha! There he is,” Hawkeye says into the phone, and then to Frank: “About time.”

“Who are you talking to?” Frank demands. With that mischievous expression, Hawkeye can’t be up to anything good.

”The finest lady in all of Indiana,” and Hawkeye smiles and says, “Yes, I mean _you_ , Mrs. Burns—”

Frank squeaks. “Why are you talking to my mother?”

“She called and you were indisposed.”

“Hand it over right now!” There’s no telling what Hawkeye has told his poor mother. She worries enough about him already.

Hawkeye ignores him, twirls his finger in the cord in the manner of a schoolgirl. “I know, he does have a temper. I’ve told him he needs to relax—hey!”

Frank snatches the telephone from him. “Mom?”

“Hello, dear,” she says. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to your friend.”

Hawkeye looks very smug. Frank turns his back to him, walks as far as the cord will allow him.

“He’s not my _friend_ ,” Frank says. “I don’t have friends.”

He hears Hawkeye make an indignant sound.

“He said you’re friends,” his mom says.

He did?

“He’s lying,” Frank says. “You know how people pretend. They get a kick out of misleading me.”

“You shouldn’t be so mean to yourself,” she says, repeating something she’s said to him all his life. “He seems friendly.”

“That’s what he wants you to think.” Hawkeye is dangerous. Even his mother has been hoodwinked. If she only _knew_ how much he’s corrupted him.

“He said his name is Hawkeye Pierce. Is he the Captain Pierce you’d write about? You got along with him, didn’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Frank says, through gritted teeth. Sometimes. Mostly when they were lying together. Other times were wishful thinking.

“He’s visiting for a while.” Frank looks over his shoulder. Hawkeye is listening. “He came home a few months ago and wanted to, uh, catch up.”

“Well, I think it’s good to have someone around. I know you’ve been lonely—”

“You didn’t call me just to talk about him,” he says, cutting her off, and then immediately apologizes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“I haven’t heard from you in a few days,” she says. “I was worried.”

“I’ve been busy.” Frank stares at the floor, because he can’t look at Hawkeye when he says that because he’s spent the better part of the last two days with him.

“You’re working too hard.”

“I’ll be alright.”

“You need to come visit me,” his mom says. “I’m worried about you. You’re never this far away from me. It’s like when you were in the war.”

“I’m only two hours away and I’m _fine_.”

“Don’t you miss me?”

“Of course I do.” Frank rubs his face. His head hurts. He wants to see his mother but lately the thought of going to his childhood home makes him anxious and she worries after him like she always has which feels suffocating now—

“I have to go,” Frank says. “I love you, Momma.”

Hawkeye stays quiet until the phone is on the hook.

“Not friends, huh?”

Frank motions for him to move over, but he only lifts his feet. Frank sighs and sits anyway. Hawkeye lays his feet across Frank’s lap. He’s wearing socks that look like he knit them himself.

“We aren’t friends.” Frank knows their boundaries. He’s not so easily fooled. Not like all those times when Hawkeye and Hunnicutt (or McIntyre) would pretend to befriend him as a hoax. “Why would you say we were?”

“She thought we were friends,” Hawkeye says. He wiggles his feet. “I suppose I can tolerate being called your friend if it makes your mother happy.”

“Don’t _lie_ to my mom.”

“Then it won’t be a lie.”

It takes a second to understand what Hawkeye means. “Don’t be a jackass.”

“That’s no way to talk to your friend.”

“Oh, you—”

Frank takes off one of Hawkeye’s socks and he seems to know what’s happening before Frank does it, trying to wrench away and going, “No, no, nonono—”

It turns out that Hawkeye is very ticklish. He erupts in peals of laughter as soon as Frank touches the bottom of his foot. He tries to wiggle away but Frank holds his ankle with his other hand and continues the attack.

“Stop it! Ah, Frank—no!” Hawkeye laughs loud and big and free. He’d probably break something if he laughed any harder. Frank can’t help but feel elated himself, and he stops for a moment to just _look_ at Hawkeye.

He is so very real.

He quiets when Frank lets up, but then he says something smart-ass and Frank starts it again.

“Have mercy!” Hawkeye gasps for breath between his laughter, and he makes a funny _honk_ noise. Frank goes behind his knee and Hawkeye yelps and falls off the sofa and onto the floor to escape it.

Hawkeye leers at him. “You’ll pay for that.”

Frank isn’t too concerned. He’s always on guard with Hawkeye, and really, it can’t be anything worse than what he’s done before.

They spend the day inside. Frank makes Hawkeye an omelet and he eats all of it without complaint — although in Frank’s opinion, he ruins it with ketchup.

(“Ketchup doesn’t taste the same as it did in the Army.”

“It was the only thing with taste,” Frank replies.)

Frank’s headache is mostly gone after he’s had coffee, so he gets Hawkeye to bed before he can start his day drinking. He gets him slicked and open and takes him from behind, proficient and impersonal. Hawkeye comes first and waits for Frank to follow a few clumsy thrusts later. Hawkeye falls asleep right after, sprawled out on his stomach, leaving Frank with not much room of his own.

It’s odd, sharing a bed with someone taller than him. Frank doesn’t mind, because he’s missed the presence of someone lying next to him and Hawkeye is really warm and comfy, although sometimes he’s all elbows and legs and hogs the blanket. Frank thinks maybe Hawkeye doesn’t realize how much space he inhabits. Or he does, and doesn’t care. Yes — that is more likely.

Frank dozes off at some point cramped on his side of the bed (they have their own _sides_ , now), because he wakes up to the sight of Hawkeye sitting up, reading.

And wearing glasses.

“Four eyes,” Frank says.

Hawkeye startles, having been engrossed in his reading (a medical journal Frank brought home last week and hadn’t had the energy to read). He looks over at him, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“It’s not nice to make fun of someone’s disabilities, Frank.”

“Don’t be such a sensitive namby-pamby.” He yawns. “I didn’t know you had glasses.”

“I didn’t until recently. I only need them when I’m reading a lot. I did a lot of reading in the…” —Hawkeye pauses, clears his throat— “…in the free time at home. I had a few headaches and realized I was squinting to make the words not blurry.”

“Well. You don’t look completely awful.”

Really, he’s attractive in them. Browline frames that go well with the shape of his face, and they don’t obscure any of the brightness of his eyes.

“You’re just saying that to get my flag up the pole again,” Hawkeye says, and his kisses taste of juniper and olive.

Frank leaves the next day at dawn, and when he comes home he’s pretty sure Hawkeye hasn’t moved all day. He’s doing the same thing as he was that morning — laying in bed, snoozing.

“Hawkeye.” Frank prods at him, but he just turns over.

It’s then that Frank notices the glass on the table.

“Lazy tosspot,” Frank mutters, but he covers Hawkeye where the blanket has slipped off his shoulder.

Hawkeye emerges from the room while Frank is having supper. He says he isn’t hungry and had something earlier. Frank doesn’t really believe him, so he doesn’t say anything when he picks at the stuff on Frank’s plate. It’s worrisome that his ribs are more prominent than they were when he was in the Army.

Hawkeye lies down when Frank does. They get each other off, mostly out of routine. Hawkeye talks through it, casual, about nonsense that Frank doesn’t listen to. His chatter stops only for a moment, going silent as he comes, and then picks back up where he left off in his sentence, “—pretended I was drunker than I was and then hustled them out of a hundred bucks in a poker game, but then I had to get the hell out of there—”

Somehow, Hawkeye goes to sleep fast, even though he had been doing nothing all day. Frank tries not to be too critical. He’ll scold him later.

Frank wakes up in pain.

His shin is throbbing from being kicked, and it takes a moment to center himself to realize that Hawkeye is shouting. Screaming, really. He’s caught in a nightmare, worse than the one he had two nights prior, thrashing like he’s fighting someone away, panicked, fighting for his life.

“Wake _up_.” Frank pushes at Hawkeye, and then nearly gets smacked in the face for it. “Pipe down, my neighbor is going to think I’m murdering somebody—”

He finds Hawkeye’s mouth in the dark, covers it to stifle him, but that seems to make it worse. Hawkeye struggles free from it and is breathing hard, hyperventilating, and through sobs says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for— _no_ —”

Frank shakes him harder, shouts over him, “Hawk!”

The fit stops in an instant and then, quiet: “Frank?”

“Yes,” he says, confirming. “You were having a nightmare.”

Hawkeye lets out a breath. It sounds sniffly.

“I still have them bad like that sometimes,” Hawkeye says. “They’re better than they used to be.”

Frank thinks: that’s _better_?

It’s not the first time he’s seen Hawkeye experience terrible nightmares. Frank very clearly recalls that series of nights where Hawkeye kept the whole camp up with his screaming and sleepwalking, and then he pestered everyone in the middle of the night because he was scared to go to sleep.

“What were you dreaming of?”

Hawkeye scoffs. “What do you think?”

The war. What else?

“I had a few bad dreams about it when I first came home,” Frank says, “but not anymore. You can’t let yourself linger on it. The war is over and you’re back in America—”

Hawkeye grabs Frank by the collar of his shirt, pulls him close, says, “You don’t understand, you never have.”

Frank’s vision has adjusted to the dark and can see how fearsome Hawkeye looks. Eyes wild and dark, and Frank is a little bit afraid.

“What do I not understand?” Frank asks, slow. ”I was there too, you know.”

“You didn’t see what I _saw_ _!_ ” He’s yelling again — Frank tries to back away but he has nowhere to go. “You escaped, you got out! We did so many terrible things—”

“We?”

“The Army,” he says. “It’s our fault, _my_ fault—”

—and then Hawkeye puts his face against Frank’s chest and cries.

Frank isn’t sure what to do with a Hawkeye like this. Openly vulnerable, searching for comfort from him. Wailing, trembling, hurt.

Life is strange. Hawkeye Pierce goes from wanting nothing to do with him to clinging to him like a lifeline.

( _he has nobody else_ , Frank remembers, _just like me_ )

Frank runs his hand up and down Hawkeye’s back. It seems to soothe him, somewhat. The tears stop and he relaxes against him, but that prickly anxiety is still there, so thick that Frank feels it, too.

_What happened to you?_

“It’ll be alright.” Frank says. “You have to let it go. Forget all that happened.”

Hawkeye pulls away to face him. “I can’t let myself _forget_. That’s the problem.”

“It doesn’t make you a better person to make yourself suffer over it. You’re using it as penance, but none of it is your fault—”

“You’re a goddamn moron,” Hawkeye says, flat, and he shoves at Frank’s chest where he had been seeking refuge moments earlier. He untangles his legs that are twisted up in the sheet and duvet, leaves Frank’s side. It’s dim in the room but Frank hears what he does — slams the bathroom door shut, locks it, turns on the shower, yells.

Frank isn’t sure what he said wrong. He never knows.

He meant what he said to Hawkeye. _Forget._ It was over, and there are so many other things to think about. They survived, didn’t they? What else matters?

—but then the memories creep back in. Being yelled at because he couldn’t stitch together the patients quickly enough. Having a gun put to his head by a crazed (scared) soldier who would’ve done anything to get home. Knowledge of how badly a body can be mangled. The scent that stuck to everything; fear. He’s known fear since he was young, but then it was just a raised voice and don’t you dare flinch because that will just make it worse—

Frank dreams of fear.

In the morning, Frank finds Hawkeye passed out on the sofa. He doesn’t stir when Frank says his name aloud. It’s not a surprise, since it appears he drank himself to sleep.

There’s a letter Hawkeye had started and Frank wouldn’t snoop but he sees his name (he couldn’t help but see it, it’s bolder than the other words, like Hawkeye had applied more pressure when he wrote it), so he carefully picks up the page from the coffee table and reads—

_Dear Dad,_

_Writing to you like this is too familiar, except Indiana is a hell of a lot closer than Korea. It’s more pleasant, too. There’s no shelling in the middle of the night, much less dysentery, no kids dying in the streets._

_The only thing that’s in the center of the Venn diagram of Indiana and Korea is Frank Burns. He’s still an obnoxious sycophant and is as clueless as ever. Still very Army in the righteous way. He doesn’t understand. However, you’ll be happy to know he’s taken it upon himself to tend to me. He makes sure I eat at least once a day and he gives me a withering glare every time I hit the bottle._

_I should tell you that currently I’m quite drunk. I would call you but it’s three in the morning which means in Crabapple Cove it’s…I’m too tired for math. I had one of those dreams again and you know how they exhaust me. I think I’m going to rest now, Dad_.

Frank puts the letter back. Takes a blank sheet of paper and writes a note—

_Going to work, be back around six._

_I’m sorry I don’t understand._

_— F.B._

He gets a spare blanket from the closet and covers Hawkeye with it. Frank is thankful that for the moment, it seems as though Hawkeye as found some peace.

Frank hardly thinks of Hawkeye during the day (four times, maybe). He’s scheduled for the ER floor so he’s kept busy with an endless turnover of patients. It’s mostly broken bones or acute cardiac care; the overnight shift is when you have the real weirdos show up or the people who are so sick they couldn’t wait any longer for treatment or junkies looking for a fix.

Frank doesn’t like it. There are too many sick people and the nurses are too high-maintenance. They aren’t even that skilled. They aren’t made of the same stuff as the ones from the 4077. He compares all his medical experiences to his time there. During his first month at the hospital, a patient was fussing that he would have a scar after an operation and Frank had replied, “Well, at least you aren’t having your leg amputated.” He received a formal reprimand for that.

He’s not liked much at the hospital, either. Only nurse Irene doesn’t seem to hate him. Frank thinks it’s because they have something in common — she had served in the war, too, but on a hospital ship offshore. They never really talk about Korea, but Frank is feeling wily he’ll call her _Navy._

She’s competent and she respects him (sort of), and she’s cute, with long auburn hair that she keeps tied back in a ponytail that swings when she walks. He made a pass at her, once, but she rejected him with a, “No, doctor _Army_ ,” and that was the end of that.

She’s working with him today, so the day isn’t entirely awful. He’s at the nurses’ station giving Irene orders for a newly admitted patient when he hears him—

“Paging doctor Burns!”

—and that isn’t Frank imagining him, that is Hawkeye strolling into the unit. He’s wasted. Two sheets to the wind. His silvery hair is a mess, uncombed, and under his open cardigan his shirt is very wrinkled, like it’s been wadded up in a bag (which Frank knows it _has_ ). He stumbles into a laundry cart, looks at it like it jumped in his way, says to it, “Excuse you.”

“Do you know him?” Irene whispers.

“Unfortunately.” Frank quickly weighs the option of ignoring him and decides it’s impossible, because Hawkeye is never ignored, so then he goes around the desk.

Hawkeye notices him, then. “There you are.” He throws his hands up, takes a step forward, stumbles over his own feet. “ _Fraaank_.”

Frank takes him by the arm and steers him away from the gathering gaggle of the nursing staff. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” Hawkeye pokes him in the chest. “We need to talk.”

“We do not.” Who knows what he’d say in this state. “Go back—” and Frank pauses because he almost says _home_ “—go back to my place and sleep it off.”

“Ah, well, could you spot me some cash? I forgot my wallet and I only had enough in my pockets for the cab ride here.”

“A cab?” Frank asks. “Why wouldn’t you take the bus? There’s a stop in front of my apartment.”

Hawkeye clenches his jaw, scowls. “I hate buses.”

“Well, I’m not paying cab fare for you when you can ride the bus.”

“I am not stepping one toe onto a bus.”

Frank sighs. “I don’t have time for this. You’re an embarrassment.”

“Thank you. My mother always said I would never amount to anything, but here I am, a genuine embarrassment.”

“Doctor?”

Irene joins them, looks between Hawkeye to Frank. Hawkeye shifts his attention on her and does one of the things he does best: hitting on nurses.

“ _Hello_ , I’m here for my check-up.”

Frank is glad that Hawkeye is sloppier than his usual. If he were his normal amount of sloppy which somehow comes off as _charming_ , his flirting might have been more effective on her.

She looks to Frank. “He shouldn’t be here.”

Frank nods. “You bet your keister he shouldn’t.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Hawkeye says, drawing out his words, slurring. “I’mma doctor.”

“ _Doctor_ Pierce worked with me at the same MASH in Korea,” Frank says, explaining. “He showed up at my home a few days ago, unexpected.”

He’s good at that. The unexpected.

“Doctor Burns has been so very gracious.” Hawkeye thumps Frank on the back, making him stagger forward. “He’s not as bad as you think, I promise. He’s got his good parts. He’s…the finest kind.”

Heat curls in Frank’s chest. Anger? No, but it’s some kind of fury, hot and raw and consuming. He feels the slow drag of it between them, and he feels the pressure of Hawkeye’s gaze — it’s too much, a violation, and he has to turn away from it.

He thinks they’ll be found out as the degenerates that they are, but Irene doesn’t seem to notice. She just rolls her eyes and announces that she has _work_ to do and then goes back to her station.

When she’s out of earshot, Frank harshly whispers, “Are you completely out of your mind, or are you planning to exceed expectations?”

Hawkeye looks as though he’s considering it. “I do like to be the best at everything.”

Frank huffs, grabs his arm, leads him to the waiting area designated for families. It’s empty, save for the tired wife of Mr. Room Two and their kids. Hawkeye grumbles, takes a seat on the opposite side of the room. Wanting to be alone to wear off his bender. He wraps his coat around himself tighter, slumps in the chair.

He deserves to suffer consequences of his actions. He’s a grown man with an advanced degree and a reasonably good mind, not a teenager with his first taste of freedom.

And yet, Hawkeye must have a reason to behave in this manner. He used to lovingly call the still in their tent his _one true love_ and on the bad days, he would hit the liquor harder. Which, fine. They all had what they needed to get by (Klinger had his dresses; Potter had his art; Father Mulcahy had prayers and a punching bag when the other didn’t work; Hunnicutt had a best friend and pranks; and Frank had Margaret and then Hawkeye but then he had neither and then he wasn’t alright, maybe he shouldn’t have put all his hope into hoping somebody would love him enough for things to be alright—).

But what is the reason now? Hawkeye told Frank he didn’t _understand_. Frank isn’t sure if he wants to understand when he remembers how a nightmare sent Hawkeye into pure terror and how he screamed—

Frank goes to the break room and pours a cup of coffee, makes it how Hawkeye likes. When he comes back, Hawkeye has his eyes closed. Frank sits next to him.

“Have this. You’ll feel better.”

Hawkeye looks bewildered at the offering of coffee. Frank isn’t certain if he even knows he had momentarily left. Hawkeye takes it and mumbles a _thanks_. Now that he’s settled, he’s reached the lethargic stage of drunkenness. That, and he looks plain miserable.

“Are you okay?” Frank asks.

Hawkeye shrugs. “I’ve been worse.”

Deflection, again.

Frank glances over at the children — they’re playing tag and the mother is too zonked out to discipline them. One of the kids shriek and Hawkeye nearly jumps out of his chair. The guy needs to relax, he’s too wound up.

He’s about to ask what was it that Hawkeye wanted to talk about, but Irene runs into the room.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she says, breathless. “You’re needed in surgery.”

Hawkeye snickers. “Call the morgue and have them reserve a spot.”

“Oh, zip it.” To Irene, Frank asks, “Can’t Wilson do it?”

“He’s already working on another patient,” she says. “It’s a hot appendix and it needs to come out now.”

“I can help, if you want,” Hawkeye says. “I’ll need to borrow a scalpel, though. I left mine in my other pants.”

“You aren’t needed,” Frank snaps. “This isn’t like the four-oh-double-seven where you can operate while intoxicated.”

“I was still better than you.”

“You know what, you’re a—”

“Pardon me, _doctors_ ,” Irene says, grabbing Frank by the arm, “but I must interrupt this quarrel. Come with me, doctor Army.”

As he’s dragged away, Frank looks over this shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Hawkeye waves his hand dismissively. “I have nowhere else to be.”

Even if it were true, Frank wishes he didn’t sound so dejected about it.

“Your doctor buddy is interesting,” Irene says as Frank scrubs up.

Frank scoffs. “He thinks he is.”

She makes a _huh_ sound, hands him a towel to dry his hands. “I noticed he isn’t married.”

“He’s seeing someone,” Frank says, more harshly than he intended and without conscious thought, and it’s then he realizes that the idea of Hawkeye with someone else makes him sick with envy.

Irene is easily deterred — says Hawkeye isn’t really her type — but Frank can’t stop thinking: eventually, Hawkeye is going to snap out of whatever depressed, masochist funk he’s in and grow bored of sleeping with Frank and remember that they are too different and that he finds him dreadfully uninteresting.

Maybe Frank will be prepared when it happens next time. Because it will: everything ends.

Hawkeye is still in the waiting room when Frank’s shift is over. Frank stands over him, just looking. He’s asleep, the back of his head resting against the wall, and there’s a home and garden magazine open in his lap. The cup Frank had brought him is empty, on the floor next to the trashcan, like he threw it and missed.

Frank knocks his foot against his. “Get up or I’m leaving you here.”

Hawkeye groans, says with his eyes closed, “Five more minutes.”

But he scrambles to his feet when Frank turns on his heel and goes in the other direction. Frank smiles to himself, triumphant.

They walk together to the parking lot. Hawkeye has sobered for the most part, so Frank doesn’t feel bad giving him a what-for.

“You made a fool out yourself, but more importantly, _me_. I have a reputation to uphold, you know. If I’m to have any chance of a promotion—”

“Please stop talking.” Hawkeye rubs his forehead. “Your voice is too much.”

“You feel like crap? Good.”

“No, your voice is annoying.”

However, when Hawkeye gets in the passenger seat he takes Frank’s sunglasses off the dash and puts them on.

Frank waits until they’re on the road to speak.

“What did you want to talk about?”

Hawkeye looks over at him. “What?”

“Earlier,” Frank says, “you said we needed to _talk_.”

“Oh, that.” Hawkeye turns back to looking out the window. “That was then. It doesn’t matter now.”

“You were rather drunk. You weren’t thinking clearly?”

“I was thinking _too_ clearly.”

Frank sighs. It’s probably for the best that they don’t talk, anyway.

“Do you want to go out for dinner?”

There’s a beat of silence and then Hawkeye asks, “Frank, are you asking me out on a date?”

Frank thinks of driving into oncoming traffic.

“It’s whatever you want it to be.”

“Huh. Alright. But you’ll have to pay, since I don’t have my wallet.” Hawkeye reaches across the seat, touches Frank’s thigh. “I’ll put out after.”

“You’re incorrigible.” Frank pushes away his wandering touch. “Yes, but you aren’t having any booze.”

“Spoilsport. How about a milkshake?”

“Fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i intended this to be only like 10k but here we are. mostly this is self-indulgent, but what writing isn't? i'm here, yelling about, "okay, but have you considered—?"
> 
> the story Hawkeye tells is from the episode "Life Time" and "Hawk's Nightmare" is referenced about him having night terrors previously


	3. false spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Days turn into weeks.

Days turn into weeks. Every morning Frank wakes up, and Hawkeye is still there. After one week, Frank clears out a drawer and Hawkeye moves his stuff into it, and then puts his suitcase in the closet. When they do laundry, their clothes get mixed together, Hawkeye’s nonsense casual clothes with Frank’s sensible attire — however, Frank claims one of Hawkeye’s comfy sweaters and wears it to work one day, and Hawkeye begins to help himself to whatever he wants.

Hawkeye ventures out more often. He gets into the habit of leaning against the counter and telling Frank what he did during the day (went to the park; checked books out from the library; bought cocktail glasses because it makes his gin _taste_ different) as Frank fixes supper, which Hawkeye eats more often than doesn’t. He’s impulsive — a couple weeks into his stay, Frank comes home to the din of someone else talking and sees that Hawkeye had bought a television because, quote, “you didn’t have one and I was bored and I wanted to see _I Love Lucy_ and The _Ed Sullivan Show_ so now there’s a television.” Frank is annoyed at his presumption — what if he didn’t _want_ one? — but he changes his mind that night when they drink two bottles of wine between them while watching programs.

Not only has Hawkeye made himself at home inside the apartment, but in the building, too. He converses with the neighbors, looking for an audience when Frank isn’t there. The old lady who lives across the hall has a lot to say about Hawkeye when she encounters Frank at the bottom of the stairs when he’s coming home from the hospital one evening.

“I met your friend today,” she says. “He’s quite eccentric.”

“That’s one word to describe him,” Frank replies, droll. He thinks of taking the stairs faster to outpace her, but that’s rude. “I’m sorry if he bothered you. He gets bored, and doesn’t have anything to do.”

“Oh, he was no problem at all.” They reach their floor, but she stays beside him. “He had a lot of interesting things to say. Some of them were about you.”

“Really?” Frank tries to not sound horrified. He thinks of all the awful things Hawkeye could’ve said about him — that he’s a coward, lost everything he had, is a bad doctor, or some allusion to why he’s been staying with him for so long.

She nods. “It’s kind that you’re giving him a place to stay while he sorts things out.”

“Yes.” Because that’s what Frank is doing, isn’t it? Letting Hawkeye stay while he finds his way back to himself. He would let him stay even if they weren’t sleeping together. Probably.

“Although,” she says, as Frank unlocks his door, “he must be uncomfortable sleeping on that couch. He’s awfully tall.”

Frank thinks of how mostly Hawkeye sleeps in his bed, curled up like a bean vine.

“He makes do.”

He’s greeted by sight of Hawkeye on the sofa, knitting. He perks up, says, “Hey, Frank.”

Frank hangs his keys on the hook, takes off his coat and scarf. “What’s it to you?”

Hawkeye smiles to himself and goes back to his knitting.

For as churlish as Hawkeye is, it’s still a better welcome home than the one Louise used to give him. In the early years of their marriage, she’d give him a perfunctory kiss on his cheek when he walked through the door, but felt like an obligation — and then one day that stopped, altogether.

However, it seems as though Hawkeye is always pleased to see him. Frank knows it’s because he’s the provider of warm meals and attention and getting his rocks off, but nevertheless, it’s nice to be appreciated.

He sits with Hawkeye. “You talked with the neighbor today.”

“Carol? Yeah.” Hawkeye counts stitches, continues on the vaguely sock-shaped item. “I went over and introduced myself. She made tea and we played checkers.”

Frank bites the inside of his cheek. “You need to be cautious about what you say. You don’t want to give anyone a reason to come to the conclusion that you’re…”

“A live-in paramour?”

“Be serious.”

“I am. I didn’t tell her that we suck each other’s dicks.”

Frank whines. “ _Hawkeye_.”

Hawkeye smiles, and goes back to his knitting.

A bored Hawkeye is dangerous. He tinkers with objects (he has to buy a new coffeepot because he couldn’t figure out how to put it back together), and has what he calls _experiments_ (his current: which brand of bread molds the fastest?) and gets mad when Frank tries to tidy them up.

And of course, he’s mildly drunk all the time. That’s a given. But it doesn’t really matter because he’s essentially the same person when he’s sober. Snarky and opinionated and bold. The booze just takes the edge of that nervousness off, somewhat.

It makes him laze about, sleep in the middle of the day. Lay on the sofa and watch garbage daytime television. Frank tells him it’s going to rot his brain. Hawkeye replies that at least then they’ll have a more equal IQ. He thinks he’s _so_ funny—

Hawkeye writes a lot. Some nights he stays up late writing letters at the table, leaving Frank to fall asleep on his own after they’ve laid together. Frank doesn’t know who he’s writing to. He assumes to his father. He makes the mistake once of asking if Hawkeye is writing to BJ. He won’t do that again.

(but he wants to ask _why not_ because based on Hawkeye’s reaction, he hasn’t spoken to his best friend. _Why not?_ Did he hurt him? If so, Frank wants to call him up and tell him off—)

And there are the phone calls. It’s usually hushed tones whiles Frank is in the other room, or he quickly hangs up when Frank comes home ( _alright talk to you later bye_ ). Hawkeye always says it’s his dad, which sometimes it is — Frank answered the ringing telephone one evening and Daniel Pierce was on the other end, and they had a brief conversation before Frank handed the call over to Hawkeye. But sometimes it’s somebody else, and while Frank doesn’t know who it is, he knows two things: Hawkeye lies about their identity, and they make Hawkeye anxious — because after a call with _that_ person he’s jittery and has to drink until that goes away.

It’s not really Frank’s business, but it becomes his problem when he receives the phone bill in the mail and nearly has a heart attack at the long-distance charges. He wants to have an argument about it, but Hawkeye just writes a check without blinking an eye.

So, Frank finds something else to argue about — he tells Hawkeye that he _could_ help out since he doesn’t do anything productive all day.

“What would you have me do?” Hawkeye asks, like it’s absurd Frank would ask him to contain his mess that’s spreading all over the apartment.

“You’re a slob,” Frank says.

“And you’re a neurotic neatnik.”

Frank huffs. “Weren’t you taught to clean up after yourself?”

“I had chores, but it wasn’t a big deal. My dad didn’t act like it was the end of the world if I didn’t put away the dishes immediately after they were washed and we didn’t sweep the floors every day.” He puts his hands out, like he’s displaying a banner. “It’s called: organized chaos.”

“Well,” Frank says, “you had it easy. If I didn’t finish my duties, my father would wake me up in the middle of the night so I could finish them.”

Or if he didn’t do them well enough or if there was something else for him to do—

Hawkeye stares at him for a long moment and then says, “That’s not normal, Frank.”

Frank shrugs. “What is?”

This sure isn’t.

But they argue, have sex, and argue some more. Usually the arguing leads to sex, so, there’s a _lot_ of that. The immediate urgency has mellowed and aren’t so touch-starved. They pace themselves. Frank likes to get Hawkeye to where he’s desperate with want. It seems to take his mind off of…whatever is plaguing him. It’s better than him getting completely trashed every night. And Frank likes it, too. It’s a much needed release he’s needed in the monotony of what his life had become. He doesn’t care it if does make him a bit queer — he’s getting better at accepting it, and he’s guilty of worse sins (greed, wrath, adultery, et cetera). Hawkeye has him read Kinsey’s report on sexuality and it makes a lot of sense. He’d say he wavers between a one and two on the scale, whereas Hawkeye is a true _three,_ smack dab in the middle.

On one of Hawkeye’s excursions, he buys a ton of condoms (and several nudist magazines, he hasn’t kicked that vice either). They make good use of the condoms, although he occasionally requests what he calls _bareback_. They have each other in every which way. Waking up in the middle of the night with Hawkeye kissing Frank’s neck and saying _let me_ as he sneaks his hand into his shorts. Half-hearted arguing while they grind on each other. Hawkeye straddling Frank’s lap on the sofa and riding the daylights out of him. Another time when Frank is just drunk enough, Hawkeye slides slick fingers inside him while he’s blowing him and it shouldn’t feel that good but it does. All of it.

And there are the other things that Frank likes just as much. They go to a local bar and play pool, which Hawkeye easily beats him at, even though he has twice as many drinks. They go out for meals — one evening Hawkeye gets a craving for Chinese food and they find a place that tastes close to authentic and while Frank feels a bit uncomfortable in the restaurant, Hawkeye tells him he’s being a bigot. He has to admit that it’s good, even though there’s the embarrassment that he has to ask for a fork since he never bothered to learn how to use chopsticks. Hawkeye tries to show him how but concludes it’s hopeless, just like his surgical skills. Then there’s the craft store where Hawkeye spends way too long picking out new yarn; he asks what Frank’s favorite colors are (and he can’t remember the last time he’s been asked that question). Hawkeye often visits him at work and brings him coffee from the fancy café next door, saying, _I was over here anyway so I might as well_ , which Frank knows is just an excuse because he stays to hang out until his shift is over.

It’s Frank’s idea to go to the movies — they share popcorn and Hawkeye, that menace, sneaks in a flask of alcohol. Frank scolds him but he drinks from it anyway — gin, only a taste since he has to drive them home. In the dark, Hawkeye gets daring, touching Frank’s knee, the inside of his wrist. Frank thinks of how he’d feel up nurses at the camp’s movie nights. _Stop_ , Frank whispers, _not now_ , and Frank thinks he won’t because even in the half-illumination of the screen Frank sees that mischievous look of his, but Hawkeye squeezes Frank’s hand and goes back to watching the movie. Frank likes it and Hawkeye must too, because he looks up the show times in the newspaper and they go to a different movie a few days later, and then the next week, and then it becomes a habit.

It’s all very fun and before Frank realizes it, Hawkeye has stayed for over a month. A month of his nonsense and lazy kisses and everything in between.

“You’re happy,” Irene notes one day.

Frank supposes he is happy.

He’s not sure if Hawkeye feels likewise.

Hawkeye’s nightmares persist. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to how intense they are. Some nights are peaceful and other nights are all anxiety and terror. If it’s a mild disturbance, Frank will wrap his arm around Hawkeye and hold onto him until it passes — most times, Hawkeye doesn’t even wake. But then there are the dreams that Frank saves him from, but it’s never quick enough. It always leaves him with damage.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Frank asks.

“No.” He never does.

Frank leans across Hawkeye, turns on the lamp. Hawkeye squints at the light, sits up. Frank arranges the pillows so they can sit together against the headboard. Hawkeye presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. Frank touches his arm. He’s clammy with cold, nervous sweat. Frank discreetly ignores where tears made trails on his cheeks.

“Sometimes I wake up and I forget where I am,” Hawkeye says. “When I remember, I wish I were still there because at least there I knew what to do.”

“Don’t say that.” Frank can’t tolerate it — it sounds like a death wish. “You know what to do.”

“Maybe, but I can’t.” Hawkeye turns to look at him. “Are you not unsettled by it at all? You’re not brave but you’re not a total idiot.”

“Since when do you believe that?” Frank asks, because he thought that is a fact: he is an idiot.

“Frank, you’ve — you’ve changed, you’re different than you were. I see it, feel it. You’re…”

“What?” He knows he’s changed. Or maybe he’s more himself, and everything he was hiding behind got worn away, leaving only him.

“You’re different. It’s a good thing,” and Hawkeye smiles faintly at him for a moment before it disappears. “I’ve changed, too. I don’t like it. I don’t know what to do. How to live with it. I’ve tried. I am better, I don’t drop to the ground when a car backfires and the nightmares aren’t as bad, or maybe I’ve just grown used to them, but damn it I can’t, I don’t… I’ll never be the same.” He rubs his face. “You think I’m pathetic.”

“No.”

“Don’t lie. I wish I had a reason to be this broken up about it. I came home whole. It’s called survivor’s guilt, or so they say.” Hawkeye goes quiet for a moment, then: “I don’t feel like I survived it.”

Frank wants to tell him _no_ , he really doesn’t think he’s pathetic and wants to know what it is that pains him, he can take it, but all he can do is kiss him. It’s soft, tentative. They’re sitting side-by-side so it’s awkward, but it’s good. Hawkeye’s breath hitches and he’s all sniffly. Frank breaks away from it. Hawkeye looks a bit lost.

“I wish I could stop caring.”

“You don’t want that,” Frank says. He is certain of this. More than he knows his own wants.

“No,” Hawkeye says. “I don’t.”

Frank doesn’t want it either — for Hawkeye, and selfishly, for himself.

And that’s why Frank deeply regrets what he has to do.

A trauma case comes into the ER and it’s very, very bad. An accident, some teenagers were messing around with a homemade explosive. Idiots. The other kid was dead on arrival but this one is… Frank takes one look and knows he can’t save him, but he knows who can.

Frank calls up his own phone number. Hawkeye should be home — it’s late in the afternoon, and he’s always back at this time if he’s gone somewhere because he doesn’t like missing his soap operas on television — but it rings and rings and rings. The operator asks if he wants to end the call but no, Frank won’t give up—

“ _What?_ ”

Frank breathes out a sigh of relief. “Hawk.”

“Frank?” says Hawkeye’s voice at the other end. “I was sleeping.”

He doesn’t sound entirely lucid. “How drunk are you?”

“Not enough. Why?”

Frank cups his hand over the phone, talks lower. “There’s a patient in the O.R. and I…I need your help.”

Hawkeye lets out a chuckle, says, “Well, Frank, first you take the scalpel and—”

“I need you to come _here_ and do it.”

There’s a long pause of silence over the line, then: “I can’t do that.”

“You can,” Frank says. “I already put in that I called for a consult. It’s taken care of—”

“No, I mean _I_ can’t do that.”

“Why not? You’re the best one to do it. I gave him a few units of blood and I’m waiting for his BP to stabilize. You can get here in time if you leave now.”

“Frank, no.”

“Please?” he asks. “He needs an arterial transplant and you do those so much better than me.” He pauses. “It’s bad, Hawkeye. I haven’t seen anything like this since Korea.”

He has rarely asks Hawkeye for anything, and he thought — stupidly — that Hawkeye would be proud of him for asking for help. Admitting his faults.

“Please?” he asks again.

He counts Hawkeye’s breaths rustling over the line. One. Two. Three—

“I’ll be right there,” Hawkeye says, and hangs up.

Hawkeye must’ve paid the cab extra to speed because he’s there in half the time it would normally take. He wasn’t lying when he said he had been sleeping; it looks like he rolled out of bed, wearing flannel pajama pants and a plain t-shirt, and his hair is sticking up in all sorts of directions. Frank ushers him to scrub up. He gives Hawkeye a pair of his scrubs to wear and tells him _stop dilly-dallying_. They wash their hands and arms together at the sink.

Frank bumps his shoulder against Hawkeye’s. “Just like old times, huh?”

“Yeah.” Hawkeye seems to be going through the motions. He doesn’t appear anxious but it’s…worrisome.

“Are you going to be okay?” Frank leans in and whispers so the nurses won’t overhear. “You’re not too drunk?”

There’s a fraction of a grin. “I’ve operated under a lot worse conditions.”

Frank agrees with that.

He leads Hawkeye into the operating theater. It’s a big difference than their place back at the 4077th. Shiny, white, clean. Not near a warzone.

Irene puts a mask on both of them, puts on their gloves. The other nurse and the anesthetist look Hawkeye up and down and then at each other, and Frank wants to tell them: _just wait and see. I was unsure, too._

Hawkeye stands over the patient. Takes a peek at their head. Closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“You didn’t say it was a kid.”

“I told you,” Frank says. “It’s like the stuff we saw before.”

The patient is seventeen. If there were still a war, he would be getting ready to be drafted.

Hawkeye is sweating already and he has that same panicked look he gets when he wakes from a nightmare but then he glances to Frank and—

—the moment passes, and it’s replaced with his usual _Hawkeye_ flair. A performance.

“Ladies and gentleman, I’m Dr. Pierce and welcome to the show—”

Frank assists. Hawkeye yells at him only once. The patient is a mess — burned flesh, broken ribs, torn insides, full of metal. Slowly, Hawkeye puts him back together, even while he’s still a bit toasted. He’s just as good as he was.

“Can you get that there?” Hawkeye gestures to a tricky area. Frank sees it, dabs up the blood, stitches it up.

“Thanks.”

The thing about wearing masks is you have to meet the other’s eyes. There is nowhere else to look. Frank didn’t realize how much he avoided eye contact until he was in surgical residency and spent the better part of his day with everyone’s faces half covered. It’s uncomfortable, awkward to look at people, to have people look at you. But there’s something about Hawkeye that he can’t look away from, he never could—

“I thought I’d be done with this shit when I got back,” Hawkeye says. He tosses a blood-soaked sponge to the floor. “And yet.”

Profanity is not uncommon in the O.R. Frank is more concerned with whatever else Hawkeye will say. Who knows. It’s always a gamble with him. Frank forces himself to look at the open chest wound in front of him and not worry about what the others — who he keeps forgetting are there — will think.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Frank says.

Hawkeye smiles — Frank sees the shape of it through his mask. “I didn’t mean that. I meant I thought people would have stopped thinking of ways to get themselves hurt.”

“Oh.”

The only sound in the room is the _whoosh_ of the ventilation bag and that horrible wet _squish_ of organs being manipulated.

Frank swears Hawkeye speaks a different language, that he’s able to communicate to a body, tell it, _show me where you’re hurt and I’ll fix it._

Hawkeye picks out another metal fragment, drops it in a tray.

“I guess it’s good to know there’s still some innocence left in me. I thought I lost it all at the tender age of fifteen, with a bottle of lotion and a nudist magazine.”

Frank gasps. “You’re filthy, you _degenerate—”_

Irene snickers, as does the other nurse. Frank feels his face go warm. He wishes Hawkeye weren’t looking at him.

“Oh, Frankie,” Hawkeye says, tilting his head at him and Frank cannot look away, “I’ve missed this.”

The operation goes fine, just like Frank knew it would, and Hawkeye manages to not embarrass either of them too badly. The patient is transferred to post-OP they stick around for a while to make sure he’s stable, and then they let the attending take over the case. Frank leaves Hawkeye in the locker room while he goes to tell the parents that their son made it and should recover just fine. The mother hugs him and he feels guilty for taking the credit, but he did recruit Hawkeye for the operation, so in a way, he deserves some of it. And he knows Hawkeye wouldn’t want it. He doesn’t do it for the praise.

Hawkeye is too quiet. Frank has to prompt him change clothes, but he does without argument, back into what he was wearing before. He looks silly in his pajamas but it’s not the strangest thing he’s ever worn, so Frank leads him to the cafeteria, orders two bottles of pop and a BLT sandwich, which they split.

“You did well,” Frank says.

“I know.”

So — why is Hawkeye so miserable? He had said he hadn’t done much surgery back home because there wasn’t really a need for it, but Frank wonders if there is another reason. Is that the _something_ that terrifies him—?

Hawkeye doesn’t say anything on the way home, except for some singing along to the radio. Once in the apartment he steps out of his shoes, lets his coat fall to the floor as he walks, makes a beeline to the bottle of scotch whiskey on the table. Takes a long drink, directly from the bottle. Sighs like sweet relief.

“Why did you do that to me?”

He is underlain with a calm fury. Tense, about to snap or break down.

Frank keeps his distance.

“Because I knew I couldn’t do it,” Frank says, “and you could.”

“Why _me?_ ” Hawkeye takes another shot. “I didn’t ask for this. I shouldn’t have to keep doing it just because I’m good at it.”

“Oh, yes. How awful it is to be good at something.”

Hawkeye laughs, harsh, bitter. He takes another swallow, grits his teeth. It’s strong stuff — Frank got messed up on it one night and Hawkeye teased him mercilessly, like he was a loser for not being an alcoholic.

It’s quickly having the intended effect on Hawkeye. That slow slip into oblivion, numbing himself from his pains. He looks at Frank, unfocused.

“I won’t help you again,” he says. “You’ll have to do it on your own. I don’t care if I could save them. I’m not a good person and fuck you for thinking I am.”

He staggers. Slugs back another drink from the bottle. He stares Frank down. “You got somethin’ to say?”

Yeah, Frank does have something to say — he hates it that Hawkeye gets drunk because he can’t stand to be around him, he hates that Hawkeye abuses himself this way, and he hates that he lets Hawkeye treat _him_ this way.

Frank goes to snatch the bottle but Hawkeye evades him.

“Watch yourself,” Hawkeye warns.

“You’re an incredible surgeon,” Frank says, and he’s raising his voice only because Hawkeye is. “Why wouldn’t you do it? You like doing the right thing, what’s _wrong_ with you?”

“Don’t get hoity-toity with me, you overgrown dodo, you don’t know _anything_ about me—”

“I know you better than you realize and that terrifies you,” Frank says, keeps going when Hawkeye lets out an offended scoff. “You _want_ to feel bad. You’re avoiding everything important to you that would make you feel better — your dad, your hometown, your job, your friends—”

“Shut up! Shut up, or I’ll make you—”

“Why don’t you want to operate?” Frank asks. “Why does it make you nervous? You could do it in your sleep and still be better than me. You’ve said that since we’ve met.”

That amuses Hawkeye. He laughs, short, _ha_.

“I could, and still can.”

He takes another drink. It sloshes in the bottle as he brings it up, then down. His eyes are hazy and he’s uncoordinated. He’s succeeded in what he wanted: getting absolutely wasted.

“I need a shower,” Hawkeye says. “I feel dirty.”

He puts the bottle in Frank’s hand, slouches off towards the bathroom. He leans on the doorframe, looks back at Frank, says, “You do _not_ know me.”

And the thing is, Frank knows he’s right, because Hawkeye wouldn’t be so upset by it if he weren’t. Frank _does_ know him. He’s not sure when he did — it was a slow creep that took hold of him, took up space inside him. He knows Hawkeye because he has that same desolate hopelessness, except it isn’t new for him — he grew up with it. Made him who he was. Maybe that’s why the war didn’t bother him as much. He was habituated to getting hurt. He knows he’s different. It wasn’t the death and constant terror that really got to him, but heartbreak, the realization that he wasn’t needed, that he could be easily replaced (by the Army, by Margaret, by Hawkeye). He could have died and it wouldn’t have mattered — he thought about that a lot. He doesn’t know how to help Hawkeye, because you never get over that feeling, you just have to accept it. Not that Hawkeye would willingly ask for help, anyway — instead of doing whatever all of _this_ is.

Hawkeye leaves the door open as he strips, steps into the shower. The conversation is done, him having the final word — as usual — so Frank tidies up Hawkeye’s mess. Puts empty bottles and cans in the recycling, his dirty clothes in the hamper. Stashes his magazines out of plain sight, away on the shelf that’s become _Hawkeye’s_. Organizes the liquor that’s overtaken one side of the counter.

Hawkeye has been in the shower for a while and Frank figures he should check on him, make sure he isn’t drowning — and he’d like to use some of the hot water before it’s used up.

“Hawk?” he calls out. No response besides the water running and running. He moves the curtain aside enough to stick his head in.

Hawkeye is slumped against the wall. If he notices Frank there, he doesn’t care to show that he does.

Frank undresses, gets in there with him. The water is still warm, thankfully. He presses up behind Hawkeye, turns his head to kiss his neck, but doesn’t try anything further. Hawkeye makes a rough sound in his throat.

“Frank,” he starts, “I—”

“It’s alright.”

Hawkeye got halfway through washing his hair; there are suds in it, so Frank rinses it out for him. Frank quickly washes himself off because the water is losing heat and then they dry off separately. Hawkeye vigorously rubs his hair with a towel. He’s in desperate need of a haircut. His hair curls at the base of his neck, is shaggy around his ears, falls in his face and has to push it back a hundred times a day.

They dress for sleeping, Hawkeye in shorts and a t-shirt, Frank in a matching set of long-sleeved pajamas. Hawkeye lies down first so Frank switches off the light and carefully gets in over him — a couple weeks ago they tried to rearrange the room so one side of the bed wouldn’t be against the wall but it wouldn’t work.

Hawkeye is facing away from him, curled on his side, like he’s protecting himself. Frank snuggles up to him. Hawkeye shifts, but relaxes against him. Frank puts his arm around Hawkeye, lays his hand over his chest. Feels his heart beating, a steady _thud. thud. thud._

And then there’s another night terror, but Hawkeye wakes on his own. Frank is still half asleep himself when Hawkeye bolts out of bed. His quick footsteps give away what’s about to happen before Frank hears the retching.

Frank can’t sleep through that, so he goes and hangs in the doorway. Hawkeye is not well — kneeling on the floor, back hunched over, sick into the toilet. Frank has sympathy, of course, but he doesn’t try to touch or comfort Hawkeye because he thinks Hawkeye would hate it, so he just waits until it’s run its course.

Frank fills the glass he uses when he brushes his teeth with water, offers it to Hawkeye, who looks up at him questioningly.

“Unless you’d like to drink something else,” Frank says.

“Don’t be an ass,” Hawkeye replies, but he takes it anyway.

“I never had a great bedside manner.”

“No.” Hawkeye rinses his mouth, spits it out, gives the glass back to Frank, flushes the toilet, sits against the wall. “That would require concern for someone other than yourself.”

He looks awful. He’s pale, sweating through his shirt, chest still heaving.

“I’m sorry you’re sick,” Frank says, “but it’s kinda what you get for drinking so much.”

“This isn’t because of the alcohol, you stupid shit,” Hawkeye says, “it’s because I’m _scared_.”

“Scared? Of what?”

“Of… I…” Hawkeye sighs. “When I came home, I got right to work. Or, I tried. The day-to-day doctoring was alright, but I couldn’t operate because I was afraid that I’d have to cut on someone I grew up with.”

Frank sits down with him on the floor of his tiny bathroom. Hawkeye pulls loose threads from the rug, keeps talking.

“Because it would happen. Most people don’t leave Crabapple Cove. You get to know everyone. I thought I’d be okay, but I couldn’t do it. I kept worrying that I’d make a mistake and then I worried that I was…that I was losing it.”

“It?” Frank asks.

“My sanity. My skills. Maybe I’ve used them all up.” Hawkeye looks down at his hands in his lap. “Every time I tried, my hands were shaky and…hell, I felt like I was you.”

 _And how did that feel?_ Frank wants to ask. How does it feel not to be certain of yourself?

“You did fine today. Perfect,” Frank says, but he remembers Hawkeye’s resistance, and that brief expression of pure terror when he saw the body laid out on the table. “Were you afraid then?”

“I forced myself not to be. I couldn’t let it take over,” Hawkeye says. “And then I didn’t feel anything.” He frowns. “I don’t _like_ not feeling. I’ve done enough of that.”

“You shouldn’t be afraid of messing up. You’re a good surgeon. The very best.” Frank pats Hawkeye’s knee so he looks at him. “Do you remember that time you were working on that guy and his heart stopped, and you were so determined to not lose him that you broke his ribcage open and took his heart in your hand to revive him?”

“Yes,” Hawkeye says, quiet. “I remember.”

“Watching you do that, it was like time stopped. You were like a god.”

“It didn’t matter,” Hawkeye says. “He died later.”

“But you didn’t kill him. You can’t stop someone from dying.”

Although he’s tried. He always took it as a personal offense when a patient would die on him. Like he didn’t do enough. Like he lost the battle with death himself.

“No.” Hawkeye rubs his temples. “I know I’m good at what I do, but I can’t stop being fucking scared. It’s ruined my _life._ I tried to move on but I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready—”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have asked if I knew you—”

“I don’t mean today. When I was still in Korea, after…” He puts his face in his hands. “I had to hold it together but I couldn’t take it anymore! I couldn’t see anymore death, but that’s all there was and I wasn’t ready—”

Frank realizes that while Hawkeye may have survived, the war claimed another casualty nonetheless.

Eventually, they make it back to bed. Hawkeye is very quiet after so much talking. Worn out. Frank rubs his back until he’s able to rest. The rest of the night goes without incident.

Frank thinks maybe Hawkeye learned a lesson but no — the first thing Hawkeye does when he wakes up is reach for a bottle and, well.

Frank snaps.

“Stop that!” He stomps his foot, yells. “Don’t!”

Hawkeye blinks at him. He seems to be surprised at Frank’s outburst. “Why would I do a silly thing like that?”

“Because it’s hurting you,” Frank says. “You’re using it to hurt yourself.”

“Oh, please, it’s nothing that complicated,” Hawkeye says. “I drink because it makes me feel better.”

“That’s—” Frank sputters, he’s furious. “That’s what I mean! You keep hurting yourself because you get drunk to feel better, but it’ll never stop.”

Hawkeye clenches his jaw. “Don’t try to be clever, Frank. You’re not that smart.”

“Look,” Frank says, not even addressing the insult, “I’m sorry I asked for your help to do a surgery and you got upset about it but—”

“You _begged_ me,” Hawkeye says. “I told you I couldn’t but you still begged me because you knew you’d fuck it up on your own.”

“How was I supposed to know you’d be a nervous wreck?”

“I’ve been telling you!”

“You haven’t told me anything,” Frank says. Yells. “Only that it was _bad_.”

Hawkeye takes an aggressive step towards him — Frank takes one backwards. He doesn’t really think Hawkeye would hit him (even though they’ve had fisticuffs before, way back when), but he kind of wishes Hawkeye would. It would resolve the argument.

The moment passes and Hawkeye sighs. “It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand.”

—and maybe Frank would understand if he explained it, or bothered to ask Frank how he feels, but nobody ever cares—

Hawkeye goes to pick up a bottle but Frank grabs it first.

He throws it against the wall.

It makes a satisfying _crash_ , shatters. Glass goes everywhere, gin runs down the wall onto the linoleum floor.

Hawkeye stares at him, open-mouthed. Frank has never seen him so surprised.

“Frank?”

And Frank high-tails it out of there.

He starts down the sidewalk. He didn’t take his car keys, or wallet, or even his coat. He had only grabbed his shoes in his hurry to get away. He put them on in the stairwell. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking as he tied the laces.

At least the weather is mild. It’s spring now, technically, although the weather can’t really make up its mind yet. One day it’ll be freezing, the next a semblance of warmth. In a few days it’ll probably snow one last time until winter returns later this year. And then it all starts over again.

He shouldn’t have lost control. He hasn’t been like that in a while. It’s humiliating. Frightening. He didn’t want be like that anymore because he is trying to be better, but Hawkeye knows how to press his buttons and he makes him _crazy_ —

Hawkeye is going to leave now for sure. Why wouldn’t he, after that? The way Hawkeye looked at him… Frank had to go because if he hadn’t he would’ve got down on his knees and apologized _I’m sorry I’m sorry_ and he knew Hawkeye would be disgusted by that and would leave forever.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do without Hawkeye. He likes that insufferable moron so _much_. He doesn’t know how to be alone again — he won’t have a purpose, and if he’s alone he’s afraid he’ll…

A couple hours later and his walk takes him back to his apartment. He half expects that the police will be there waiting for him, called in by the neighbors because of a _domestic_ dispute, but no.

He prepares himself for heartbreak.

The door is unlocked.

The first thing he notices is that it’s _clean_. The mess from the broken bottle is gone and mopped up, but everything else is straightened as well. The pile of shoes by the door are orderly, the floor swept. Dining table cleared off and wiped down. Books on the shelf arranged in alphabetical order. Various items that were strewn about the apartment are back in their proper place.

Hawkeye’s whirlwind of chaos, gone.

But before he begins to mourn, Hawkeye comes into the room holding a laundry basket.

“You’re back.” He sets the basket down. “I was cleaning.”

“I see that.” Frank’s words are thick in his throat. “Why?”

Hawkeye shrugs. “I was bored.”

“Right.” Frank doesn’t entirely believe him, but he doesn’t believe he did it out of the kindness of his heart, either. “Hawkeye, I’m—”

“I thought I’d make something for a change,” Hawkeye says, cutting him off. “French toast. It’s a Pierce family specialty.”

“Um, alright.”

Frank sees that Hawkeye has tidied the refrigerator, too. It kind of makes him want to cry.

Hawkeye gives him a quick peck on his cheek, and then, as if on second thought, gives him a proper kiss on the mouth. The expression he has makes Frank feel a lot of things.

Frank is pretty sure Hawkeye is sober.

“Here, you crack the eggs,” Hawkeye says, and then everything is back to normal — as normal as it can be, for them.

That night when Hawkeye starts with the booze, Frank doesn’t say anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your positive feedback! It means a lot. The fact that I have convinced others into this has made my day, tbh.
> 
> -The scene where Frank calls Hawkeye for help with an operation is the first thing I thought of for this.  
> -Hawkeye doing the experiment with which bread molds the fastest is the most Hawkeye-thing I think I'll ever think up.  
> \- The patient Frank mentions, where Hawkeye broke open the ribcage and does a heart massage, is from the episode "O.R.", one of my most favorite episodes.  
> \- I had talked to my friend that I thought I was making Frank too smart, and they replied that the show made Frank too dumb and you know right, yeah, that's right. There's development here, y'all.


	4. spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trip to Fort Wayne.

They don’t apologize. Why would they?

(Frank _would_ , but then Hawkeye might get the wrong idea and…)

Hawkeye drinks, Frank looks the other way. One of them will say something that ruffles the other’s feathers and they fight — but then they go to bed together and what they said doesn’t matter after that. They need each other in some bizarre way, whether they like it or not. Who needs forgiveness when they have that?

Frank knows better to get his hopes up.

While he’s caught up in the _maybe_ , Hawkeye can’t escape from the memories—the fears that haunt him. He tosses and turns, pleads for something to end that will never end for him. Frank doesn’t always wake him up from his bad dreams right away, thinking maybe his sleep mutterings will reveal the secrets he’s keeping, but usually it’s just _no_ and _please_ and _don’t_ and then: screams. Sometimes there are names. Charles. Klinger. Radar. Margaret. Henry. Trap. _Beej_ —

He only says Frank’s name when he’s awake (“…Frank?”), in the dark. Frank doesn’t know if that’s better, or worse.

But Frank isn’t above snooping to find out.

Hawkeye is passed out, sprawled in the middle of the bed — he had stayed up half the night doing whatever it is he does, only crawling into bed beside Frank in the early hours of the morning. He’ll probably be sleeping for a few hours more.

Frank looks over his shoulder to make sure he isn’t there, anyway.

He has a right to investigate. He’s worried about Hawkeye and really, Hawkeye has been invading _his_ privacy, so what’s a bit of give and take?

He shuffles through the papers Hawkeye left on the table. They’re face down, not meant to be disturbed. It’s an invitation. Really, Hawkeye _should_ know Frank better.

It’s a letter, full of Hawkeye’s messy scrawl. Frank’s eyes fall to somewhere in the middle of the page—

_—everyone else has moved on, living their life, but I can’t. They say they want to help me, but they only say that because they feel obligated. I’m a burden. They’re better off without me. And him — you know who — I want to talk to him but I don’t know how. He’s tried to reach out to me but I won’t let him. He makes me crazy, in a bad way, but in the good kind of way, too. I shouldn’t… It would never work, but I still want to. I want to tell him but I can’t because it would change things and I’m afraid to lose what I have. I have already lost too much and I don’t even know what I want—_

Frank puts it back, carefully, the way it was. He’s read enough.

So, that’s why Hawkeye refuses to talk about him about BJ. Frank knew Hawkeye was in love with BJ, and apparently, he still has it bad it for him. Maybe BJ loves Hawkeye too, but he loves his wife _more_ , and not like _that._ Hawkeye doesn’t fit into the idyllic life of a wife and a kid and another on a way. He would be _extra_ , whereas to him, BJ would be everything.

Frank’s first thought is: _good_ , because then there’s no competition, and then he thinks: _what the hell?_ Since when does he care? Since when does he want Hawkeye to feel that way about him?

(His third thought: bewilderment that Hawkeye could have that discussion with his _father._ He knew the Pierces were close, _but_ …)

…he has half a mind to call up BJ Hunnicutt and tell him what he thinks. That he’s a fool for rejecting Hawkeye. Doesn’t he know he’s hurting him? That he wants him? But he also wants to thank BJ, because Hawkeye wouldn’t have gone to him otherwise.

(He’s always second: second son, second-in-command, second in hearts, second to none.)

But sometimes — sometimes — being second is better, because you’re there waiting when the first falls through.

He can’t delay visiting his mother any longer — she knows just how to make him feel guilty enough to crack — but he asks Hawkeye to go with him to Fort Wayne. His mother thinks Hawkeye is _nice_ when she’s talked with him on the telephone, and maybe having him there will keep her from being too harsh.

“Absolutely _not,_ ” says Hawkeye, but Frank wears him down, begs, _please, Hawkeye, please do this for me, it will be good for you to go somewhere and plus she’ll be nicer if there’s company, pleeeeease—_

He thinks Hawkeye agrees mostly to shut him up.

It’s probably a terrible idea.

They go to the barber the day before. Frank gets a haircut, and Hawkeye gets one as well — not too much, but enough that he doesn’t look sloppy and unkempt. It’s annoying how he’s stupidly attractive either way.

Hawkeye goes easy on the liquor that night, having only a normal amount. Frank has some to dull his nerves. If Hawkeye senses that he’s uneasy, he doesn’t say anything about it. Although, he teases him, his mouth hot at his neck—

“I should give you a nice love bite, right here.” Hawkeye kisses his throat. “Make your mother think you’ve got yourself a woman.”

“No,” Frank says, “and please don’t talk about my mother when we’re…”

“Naked?”

He is awful. The worst.

He sucks a bruise on his chest, instead.

Frank wakes that morning, consumed with dread. He thinks of telling his mother he can’t go, saying that he was called into work, that he’s fallen ill, that he forgot how to drive, _anything._

“And deprive me of meeting mother Burns? No.” Hawkeye pats Frank’s rear. “Up and at ’em.”

Hawkeye sharpens his razor to get a nice, clean shave, then puts on aftershave, the same he used to wear back when. He combs his hair so it’s tidy. He borrows one of Frank’s button-down shirts — he’s thinner than Frank but he makes up for it with height so it fits him well — and he tucks it into his slacks. He even wears a belt. He looks very handsome. Very un-Hawkeye.

“Are you trying to impress her, or something?” Frank asks.

Hawkeye puts on a lightweight suit jacket that’s also Frank’s. “I don’t want her thinking I’m a ragamuffin. I’d wear my pinks and greens to really dazzle, but I lost the uniform.”

Frank drives. Hawkeye is notably sober so he’s a little fussy until they stop to fill up for gas outside of Fishers and he goes into the convenience store to buy a candy bar. He’s calmer after that, but Frank gets antsier the closer they get to their destination.

“Are you alright?”

Frank glances sideways at him before looking back at the road.

“Yeah,” Frank says. “Just a bit nervous is all.”

“Why?” Hawkeye pauses, then asks, “Are you embarrassed to have her meet me?”

He doesn’t have to be looking at Hawkeye to know he’s smirking.

“Not really.” Frank is concerned about what Hawkeye might do, but that isn’t what has him worried. He clears his throat. “It’s…”

He taps his hand against the steering wheel. He doesn’t know how to explain: she’s the only person who loves me unconditionally but sometimes she doesn’t make me feel good.

“I haven’t seen my mom since Christmas, and I’m worried what she’ll say.”

“I thought you’re close with your mom.”

“I am. But…” Frank shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

Frank sighs. “She means well, but she can be a bit critical.”

“Critical?”

Frank thinks of when he came home and told her he had to spend another year in med school, and she replied, _“Are you even trying? I hate to see you waste your time.”_

“She’s going to ask a lot of questions I don’t want to answer,” Frank says. “It hasn’t been easy to talk her since…you know.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye says. “I know.”

Frank tried to talk to his mother about it — the war — honestly, just once, when she picked him up from the hospital stateside — he had nobody other than her to call to take him home. He told her it was _too much_. That he could live through it when he had his _friends_ but when they abandoned him, he couldn’t—

“I knew you were too delicate for it,” she had said. “I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did.”

Just like everyone else, she expected him to fail.

Hawkeye is quiet, looking out the window at the passing Indiana landscape. Frank wishes he would say something. Why does he never talk when he wants him to talk?

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Hawkeye looks over at him.

“I was thinking,” he says, “that since you aren’t concerned that I’m going to embarrass you, I’m going to have to try harder to do so.”

“Hawkeye, don’t—”

Hawkeye doesn’t embarrass Frank. He’s a perfect gentleman. He’s making an effort to be good. Frank finds himself wishing that Hawkeye would be rude because he’s pretty sure his mother is about to adopt Hawkeye as a replacement for her favorite son.

But she likes Hawkeye, and that’s a relief. It isn’t until they’re having lunch that Frank realizes it feels as though he’s brought home a date for her approval.

“She isn’t so bad,” Hawkeye says when she leaves the table to refill their drinks. “I don’t know why you were worried.”

They’ve been talking at the table, which won’t ever feel odd to Frank; conversation at a meal was something that didn’t happen at the Burns’ residence. Even when he came home in the summer from college, they ate in total silence. Which wouldn’t be so bad if people listened to him away from the table. _Nobody wants to hear what you have to say,_ his father told him. His father stopped hitting him after he was in college (Frank gained a bit of muscle, and his father started having heart issues), but Frank was still seated at the usual right-hand side, as though to keep the threat that he could be smacked, if needed.

“You’ll see.”

And Frank is right — she starts on him not long after that.

“I’m so glad Frank has a friend,” she tells Hawkeye. “Thank you.”

Hawkeye takes that moment to have a long drink of lemonade. He glances to Frank before looking back at her.

“Well,” he says, “Frank is a great guy.”

Frank hears the restrained sarcasm under the compliment. His mother, too emotional, doesn’t notice.

“My Frank has always been a loner,” she says. “He never connected well with others. When he was young, I’d get all the mothers at church to bring their kids over for his birthday parties.”

“It wasn’t fun,” Frank mutters. “They never brought me presents.”

“They wouldn’t have come otherwise,” his mother says, and then goes on, speaking to Hawkeye, talking about Frank even though he’s _right there_. “I worried about him endlessly while he was overseas. I know most people didn’t like him, although he did write favorable things about you.”

Hawkeye’s brow quirks up. “Did he?”

“Yes. He said you were disorderly and at times troublesome, but you were fascinating.”

“Fascinating, huh?”

“And troublesome,” says Frank, terse. “Mom, can we—”

“He needs someone to take care of him,” she says. “He should get married again while he still can.”

“Yeah, Frank.” Hawkeye puts his elbows on the table, which is the least mannerly thing he’s done all day, puts his chin on his hands and bats his eyelashes at Frank. “Are you seeing anybody?”

Frank tries to kick him under the table, but his foot swings in the air, missing him. Jerk.

“I’m not ready for someone,” Frank says. “I’m trying to build my career back up.”

“Uh huh,” Hawkeye says, droll.

Frank glares at him.

“You should hurry,” says his mother. “Your looks won’t last forever.”

Her eyes flit up to his hairline.

“Mom!”

As an aside to Hawkeye, she says: “He’s been languishing. Things were hard for him after he came home from Korea.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Frank says at the same time Hawkeye says, “It was rough for all of us.”

They look at each other. There’s a silent conversation between them, but Frank isn’t really sure what they’re saying. Like they’re tuned to different radio frequencies, and it’s just static.

“You know how Frank doesn’t handle things well,” she says, and while it’s true, she doesn’t need to mention it. “He was very upset, and had to spend some time—”

Frank gives his mother a look, shakes his head. _No_.

Thankfully, she understands, and thankfully, it seems as though Hawkeye does not.

But she must feel like she must fill the silence because she keeps talking. “Everything fell apart for him. Divorced, lost his practice—”

“That’s enough, Mom.”

“—and his girls, he hasn’t seen them in ages.” She puts a hand over her heart. “They’re the sweetest little things. Louise brought them by for a visit a few weeks ago. You wouldn’t recognize them, Frank. Marie has grown a foot.”

Frank’s eyes sting. He looks to Hawkeye for help, but he’s become interested in his plate, pushing around his food with his fork.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk to Louise,” Frank says. “You should take my side.”

“I am on your side, honey.” His mother pats the side of his face. “Don’t be so upset. It’s not that big of a deal.”

But it _is_ to him. He hates when she does that — telling him his problems aren’t problems. Everyone does that to him. What is it about him that makes people not care about his feelings?

He quietly excuses himself from the table, goes down the familiar hallway to his room. All these years later, he’s certain he could find his way through the house in the dark; as a kid, he used to sneak into the kitchen when everyone else was asleep because sometimes he’d be sent to bed without enough to eat as punishment.

His room looks the same as the last time he was there. There are a few remnants of his childhood — pictures, a Hoosiers pennant, books, his high school diploma — but over the years it became less and less his. He stayed here several weeks after Louise threw him out, and he’d wake up in the middle of the night and not know where he was. It wasn’t his home. He didn’t have a home. Not the home he made with his family or the home where he grew up or even the tent across the sea that became his home for a while. And so, he decided to move across the state. Away from everything and everyone he knows. Start over.

“Frank?”

Hawkeye is standing there in his doorway.

“I’m alright.” Frank clears his throat. “I needed a moment alone.”

“Sure.” Hawkeye picks up a framed picture on the dresser. “Is this you?”

“Yeah.” In the picture he’s twelve, at that awkward gangly age, wearing his Boy Scout uniform. His mom is standing behind him, hand on his shoulder. “I won a leadership award.”

“Major in the making.” Hawkeye smiles at him briefly, then looks down at the picture again. “Cute.”

He puts it down and gets closer, sits with Frank on the bed. Pats his knee. “I just wanted to let you know that I, uh. I’m on your side.”

Frank can’t respond — not without crying — and judging how Hawkeye can’t meet his eyes, he doesn’t want him to.

“Do you have anything to drink?” Frank asks and when Hawkeye gives him an innocent _me?_ look, he adds, “I know you do.”

Hawkeye sighs and pulls a flask from inside his jacket. Frank unscrews it and drinks. Gin. Of course. He passes it to Hawkeye and he takes a swallow himself.

“We could tell her that we’re banging,” Hawkeye says. “Then we’d both be a disappointment.”

Frank goes _humph_. They can’t tell her that but he does wonder if it would challenge what his mother has always told him, _I’d love you no matter what—_

“Come back,” says Hawkeye. “Your mom said there’s pie. After that we can skedaddle.”

“In a moment,” Frank says, and he leans in and kisses him.

After the pie and a reasonable amount of time later, they make their leave. His mother gives both of them a kiss on the forehead and makes Frank promise to visit again soon, and then they get into the car and drive away.

Around the corner, Frank says, “Thank you for being normal.”

”I can manage it once in a while.”

Silence lulls between them, and then Hawkeye speaks again.

“No wonder you turned out the way you did.”

Frank looks to his side at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Hawkeye brushes his hair away from his forehead. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess I get it, is all. Why you’re so…you.”

“Uh huh.”

More silence. Then Hawkeye says: “You’ve said your father used to hit you, yeah?”

“Yes.”

Hawkeye nods. “Is that why you don’t like it when I get really drunk? Did your father get wasted before he beat on you?”

“No,” Frank says. “He didn’t need an excuse to be cruel.”

“Are you implying I’m cruel to you?”

“Well…not _cruel_ but you’re not nice.”

“Well, shit. I guess so.” Hawkeye lets out a heavy sigh. “Listen, Frank—”

“It’s fine, I deserve it. I know I’m a jackass, too,” Frank says. “It’s how we are, you and me.”

“Yeah.” Hawkeye has that grief-stricken tone again. “Frank, I’m sorry for the things that have happened to you.”

And maybe it’s because of the touch of alcohol, or because he’s in a familiar place that doesn’t feel familiar at all, or because Hawkeye is being sympathetic, he cries.

“Oh, christ.” Hawkeye rests his hand over Frank’s on the wheel. “Pull over.”

“I’m fine.” He bites his tongue but then another sob escapes. “It’s okay, I’ll stop in a moment—”

_“Frank.”_

He parks on the side of the street.

“I’m okay.” He won’t look at Hawkeye—can’t. “I’m okay, I’m not crying, don’t be mad—”

“I don’t care,” Hawkeye says, then waves his hand at Frank. “I meant it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not mad. You can cry if it makes you feel better.”

“You don’t care if I feel better, you just want me to not bother you!”

But Hawkeye doesn’t argue, one way or another. He doesn’t make fun of him or call him names. He just sits there, with him.

“You’ve had a long day,” says Hawkeye, uncharacteristically gentle. “I’ll drive us home.”

Frank sniffles. It has been a long day. “I remember how you drive. This is not a race through Uijeongbu dirt roads.”

However, he opens his door, gets out. Hawkeye slides over in the seat as Frank walks around to the passenger side. He says, “I’m crazy for trusting you.”

“Give me a break,” Hawkeye says as he puts the car into gear. “I flipped a jeep only once,” and Frank has to hold on when Hawkeye puts his foot on the gas and intentionally lurches the car forward.

They make it back to Indianapolis unscathed. They stop at a drive-in restaurant and have a lot of greasy food in the car. Hawkeye eats all of Frank’s tater tots, but then Hawkeye shares his milkshake, so he’s forgiven.

By the time they get back to the apartment, Frank is exhausted, physically and emotionally. He calls his mom to let her know they got back safe, then gets in the shower before Hawkeye can claim it.

He shouldn’t have brought Hawkeye with him. Now he knows too much — he’s too close. Frank has worked very hard at keeping those parts buried away but Hawkeye has a way of prying them from him, dissecting him, but the closer he gets the less Frank cares. He wants him to know, he wants to trust him, he wants…

Hawkeye is lying on the bed, clad in only his boxers. He’s made up for going the whole day mostly dry; he has that drunken air about him. At ease. Frank is sick on the things he won’t say — doesn’t know how to say — but Hawkeye doesn’t give him a chance to say anything. He pulls Frank into a kiss, unties his robe and slides it off his shoulders, drags him down onto the mattress with him. Hawkeye shimmies his boxers down his slim legs and kicks them to the floor, rubs himself against him — he’s hard, and Frank is quickly getting there.

“Hawk,” Frank says, and Hawkeye makes a pleasant sound that goes straight to his dick. Hawkeye seems more interested in kissing — sloppy ones that taste like scotch. He curls his hand at the nape of Frank’s neck, breathes in his ear.

“What do you want?”

Frank isn’t really sure what he means. It’s hard to focus when his erection is pressing against his thigh. “Huh?”

“What,” Hawkeye asks, drops his head down, kisses Frank’s chest, licks his nipple, “do you want me to do for you?”

“Um.” Nobody has ever really asked him that. He’s usually fine with whatever the other wanted. Occasionally, he’d ask Margaret for things ( _more; not there; slow down; put your mouth on it, please?_ ) but he would never lead.

“Well, Frankie?” Hawkeye asks between kisses. “What say you?”

Frank’s thoughts stutter, falter.

“This is good,” he says. “But touch me.”

Hawkeye makes an amused sound, taps Frank’s nose. “Here?”

He’s teasing him.

“No.”

Hawkeye drags his finger down the line of his body to his stomach.

“Here?”

Frank laughs high and loud — he’s never been able to control it. “ _Stop_ that.”

“You want me to stop? If you insist—” and Hawkeye goes to roll away but Frank grabs him around the waist and pulls him back.

Hawkeye gives him what he wants, wrapping one of his lovely hands around where Frank is aching, licks into his mouth. Frank gets his hand between them and Hawkeye moans when he’s touched, bites at Frank’s lip. Hawkeye grips him just right, bringing him off with firm strokes, all while kissing him incessantly. A deluge of affection. Frank matches it with as much fervor, so much that Hawkeye chuckles at him — but it doesn’t feel mean-spirited at all, but _fun_. Hawkeye makes him feel good about himself and he has that marvelous tug of lust coursing in his body.

He thinks Hawkeye is having fun, too. Or as close as he’ll allow himself. Frank knows that he likes screwing him, because _he’s said so_ and he’s incredibly honest about what he likes and doesn’t like about Frank.

Although, he can only be incredibly honest when he’s drunk.

Frank gets lost in it for a moment, but then Hawkeye is moving his hand aside. Frank fusses because he wants to be touching him _there_ but then Hawkeye rubs their dicks together and oh, that’s very good. Frank almost loses it right then but manages to hold off. It’s slippery with their slick — Hawkeye ends up thrusting into Frank’s pelvis and he has to use his hand to right himself, then hooks his leg over Frank’s and settles into a good grind. Like he’s some shaggy alcoholic dog looking for a hump in an alleyway. It’s too uncoordinated to focus on anything other than them moving against each other. Frank puts his hand on Hawkeye’s back, feels the roll of his movements. Frank stares at Hawkeye’s face — the crowsfeet next to his eyes, the stubble on his chin, the pink tint to his lips. Since when did he start thinking he was handsome?

Hawkeye is first to finish, spilling all over Frank which makes him come about two seconds after. It’s horribly messy but neither are in a rush to move — and while Hawkeye is too warm and too sticky, Frank is happy to have him pressed against him.

Frank’s pulse feels somewhat normal and Hawkeye wipes up the mess with tissues (which he then tosses onto the floor next to the bed with the promise, “I’ll clean it up tomorrow,” even though Frank is the one who has to pick them up every time). Frank scoots close, rests his face against Hawkeye’s shoulder, but Hawkeye edges away from him, distant — he had just been so nice, Frank doesn’t _understand_ —

“Are you mad with me?”

Hawkeye glances at him and then back up at the ceiling. “No. Yes. It doesn’t matter.”

“It _does_ matter.” Frank touches Hawkeye’s shoulder. “What did I do?”

Because there’s always a reason.

Hawkeye shrugs him away, sits up, covers his lap with the blanket. “What are we doing?”

“…talking?”

Hawkeye runs his hands through his bed-tousled hair. “You’re so stupid.”

 _“You’re_ stupid.” Frank sits up, quick — that nice compassionate feeling is gone, replaced with being properly pissed off. Why does Hawkeye have to ruin everything? “You’re the one who gets mean because you can’t handle having an emotion about me.”

“I shouldn’t have come here,” Hawkeye says, quiet, more to himself. Frank is about to reply, _well maybe you shouldn’t_ , but then Hawkeye looks at him with those striking blue eyes and again asks, “What are we _doing?”_

“The sex?”

“Everything.”

“I thought,” Frank says, and he hates how his voice wavers, “I thought you liked it. Me.”

Hawkeye pinches the bridge of his nose. “You caught me off guard, I was… _am_ not myself, and at some point I’ve grown to tolerate you.”

“Tolerate,” Frank repeats. “Golly, you sure know how to make someone feel special.”

“I didn’t know what I was expecting from you—” Hawkeye gestures at Frank with his hands “—but it wasn’t this. Not for us to fall into a routine, for me to become part of your boring life.”

“Just because I don’t frequent skeevy bars or have a lot of friends doesn’t mean I’m boring,” Frank says. “There’s nothing wrong with a predictable and peaceful life.”

Although, his life has been anything _but_ boring since Hawkeye showed up on his doorstep.

“That’s not like me, and especially not with _you_ ,” Hawkeye says. “But I don’t want it to stop. It’s the first time I’ve felt somewhat normal since I’ve been back, but I feel crazier than I’ve ever been.”

“Why?” Frank asks, although he knows the answer because Hawkeye has made Frank feel a bit crazy, too. And he knows _crazy_.

“Because none of this makes any sense,” Hawkeye says. “When we have dinner together every night, and you make things I like. That thing you made last week, with the fig jam? It was delicious. It’s infuriating.”

“So, I like doing nice things for you,” Frank says. “Is that so terrible?

Hawkeye wrinkles his nose, makes a sound of disgust. “Yes, it _is_ terrible. Because then I do nice things for you like bring you coffee at work, knit you socks, or clean up because I know you like it.”

“You don’t want to be nice to me.” Frank never mistook those small actions of kindness for anything more than they were but he thought that _maybe_ there was genuine affection—

“No,” Hawkeye says, and Frank feels a bit sick as Hawkeye keeps talking, “but I want to do those things, even though I’m not a nice person. I like being with you. I like laying with you.”

Frank feels his face go pink. “Is that all?”

“No. I like your stupid commentary when we watch shows and I like sleeping — actually sleeping — with you. I haven’t shared a bed with someone this many nights in a row since...for a very long time.” Hawkeye frowns, like he’s thinking of something else. “I don’t get close to people like this. I mean, we have a weekly movie date for christ’s sake.”

“You don’t like that?” It’s what Frank looks forward to most each week. His favorite movie they’ve seen was _Creature from the Black Lagoon._ They wore 3D glasses and at one point it startled Hawkeye so badly he spilled the popcorn.

“I fucking love it,” Hawkeye says. “It’s fun. Why weren’t you this fun in Korea?”

“Because you were too busy finding things you didn’t like about me,” Frank says. “And you always had someone else — McIntyre, and then Hunnicutt.”

“Yeah.”

Neither has to elaborate for Frank to remember that he is not Hawkeye’s first choice. Because it’s Hunnicutt who Hawkeye _really_ wants — Frank wishes he never read that letter where Hawkeye confessed his yearning for BJ.

Frank wonders if Hawkeye hates him for that. That he’s the best he can have.

“You were also a yankee-doodling prat,” says Hawkeye. “It was like you got off on saying the pledge of allegiance.”

“I would never. That’s disrespectful.”

Hawkeye catches the humor, gives him a _look_. Not the time.

“But you aren’t as bad, now,” Hawkeye says. “You still irritate the hell out of me, but you’re tolerable. Why is that?”

There’s that word again. _Tolerable_.

Frank shrugs. “I was humbled, I guess.”

Hawkeye is quiet, like he’s waiting for Frank to say more — but he doesn’t, so he speaks instead.

“How can someone who is so emotionally base be so compassionate?” Hawkeye says. “When I wake up crying, you do that _sweet_ —” he pauses, like he can’t get through it, “—thing where you rub my back until I relax, and _what in the hell are we doing?”_

Frank feels the conversation spiraling, feels himself losing composure the more unhinged Hawkeye becomes. “What do you want? Do you want to br—”

He stops himself before he says it, but it’s too late; Hawkeye _heard_ and as Frank expected, he overreacts.

“ _Break up?_ ” Hawkeye is loud, shrill. Approaching hysteria. “We aren’t a couple, I’m not your boyfriend, your sweetheart — but no, no, _no,_ we have accidentally become something, you’ve talked with my dad on the phone and I’ve met your mother—”

“You said you were okay with that!”

“I know!” Hawkeye puts his hand to his forehead. “I’ve never been with anybody long enough to meet their mother, but here I am, having brunch with yours with an invitation to come back soon.”

“She thinks we’re friends,” Frank says. “There’s nothing suspicious about that.”

“She thinks we have a _connection_.” Hawkeye uses his fingers as quotations in the air. “When you ran away from the table, she told me how glad she was that you finally have someone in your life and that you’ve never had a best friend, and that she knows you can be a nuisance but you mean well and—”

“She called me a nuisance?” Although, Frank isn’t surprised. He remembers overhearing his parents arguing when he was a kid — his mother asking his father why wouldn’t he take him along with his brother to the park, and his father replied they needed time _away_ from him.

“Well, aren’t you?” Hawkeye asks, doesn’t give Frank a chance to defend himself. “She asked me to _help_ you. I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.”

Frank wonders what his mother thinks he needs help with.

“Did she say anything else about me?”

“No,” says Hawkeye. “After that I went to find you. It was getting weird.”

So, it could be worse.

Frank tells Hawkeye this. He does not agree; he acts as though this is another tragedy for him.

“I didn’t want this, but I couldn’t stop myself. You’re worse than the damn liquor—”

“I didn’t want this either, you know,” Frank says. “You made me a queer.”

Hawkeye laughs, maniac-like. “If I had powers such as those, I wouldn’t have picked _you_. But sure, tell yourself whatever you need to get by, Frank. You were so heavily influenced by me that you were compelled to fuck a man in the ass and suck his dick.”

He’s so _frustrating_ — Frank can never have a meaningful conversation with the man. He evades, turns things around, makes Frank feel stupid on purpose.

Frank looks at Hawkeye, at his bare chest dusted with gray hair and his spindly shoulders and that distinct nose and the curve of his lips and okay. Yes.

“I like you,” Frank says, “but you don’t make it easy.”

“ _Good_. I don’t want it to be easy.”

And because Frank doesn’t know what else to do, he kisses him, just a gentle press of his mouth to his. Hawkeye gives back for a second, but then pushes him away.

“I don’t need that, I don’t need affection—”

“Yes, you do, and you want it.” Frank kisses at his neck. “You’ve stayed and you said it, you like—”

Hawkeye shoves him, hard, rejecting.

“You’re hurting me.” Physical, emotional — it doesn’t matter, he’s used to being hurt both ways. “Please don’t—”

“Just because you want to be coddled doesn’t mean I want to be,” Hawkeye says. “I don’t need it, I don’t need _you_ —”

“Then maybe you should leave if you don’t want to be with me,” and as soon as Frank says it he regrets it because Hawkeye gets out of bed and starts to dress—

“You can’t leave, you have nowhere to go!”

Hawkeye pulls up his shorts, puts his hands on his hips. It looks like he’s thinking of the best way to verbally attack, but he just shakes his head and grabs a shirt from the dirty pile.

“Hawk, don’t go—”

“Relax.” He takes his pillow and the extra blanket that’s at the foot of the bed they pile on them on cold mornings. “I’m too tired and too drunk to go anywhere.”

It sounds like a flimsy excuse.

But Frank doesn’t argue. He stays awake for a long time listening to the sounds of Hawkeye’s restlessness in the other room and the gentle clink of a glass being picked up and placed on the table over, and over.

And like clockwork, Frank wakes up to the distress of Hawkeye’s dreams.

It’s faint, from the other room. He _feels_ it more than hears. It goes on and on — by now, Frank would have rescued him from it and they’d be snuggled up together…

He goes into the living area, where Hawkeye is sleeping on the sofa. Hawkeye is still in the throes of the nightmare. It’s not near the worst he’s ever had but it’s still very painful for Frank to witness. Hawkeye’s face is scrunched up like he’s about to cry and he’s making a bunch of fretful noises and softly calling out for his _dad_. Anguished, suffering. Frank wishes he knew what’s hurting him, what it is that he can’t let go—

Frank goes to shake Hawkeye awake because he doesn’t want Hawkeye to hurt, even when he thinks of every mean thing Hawkeye has ever done or said to him, but then he remembers that he’s supposed to be mad with Hawkeye and he remembers how Hawkeye doesn’t want to be _coddled_ , so—

Frank leaves Hawkeye on his own to fight his battle, and goes back to the bed, alone. He supposes he means to punish Hawkeye, but it feels like it feels like he’s hurting himself, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE there's going to be another chapter on this. Originally, there was only going to be a mention of them going to see Frank's mother but I was like, "no, this must be explored."
> 
> \- tater tots were invented in 1953, aka, when life really began to be worth living


	5. high spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is fine, until it's not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings for: recreational drug use, discussion of infanticide, suicidal ideation. and again big warning for alcoholism.

Late in the morning, Frank quietly slips out of the apartment as to not wake Hawkeye snoozing on the sofa. He’s still mad with Hawkeye, and isn’t in the mood for round two of their argument.

He finds things to do in town, to distract himself and stay away. He drops off a few shirts for dry cleaning, browses the farmers market (and picks up some of the sour cherry preserves that Hawkeye likes), has lunch in the park. He isn’t in a real hurry to go back since he’s still thinking of what to say to Hawkeye — because they have to talk. Not talking is what got them into this situation.

He makes it back to his apartment a little after two in the afternoon. He almost trips on Hawkeye’s shoes by the door, so he knows Hawkeye hasn’t packed up and left. The lights are dim, the curtains drawn shut, the radio is softly playing, and there is Hawkeye, lying on the sofa.

“Hey, Frankie.”

Frank doesn’t trust him, because Hawkeye only calls him _Frankie_ when he’s being cheeky.

He puts the preserves on the counter, makes a point to not look at Hawkeye — he knows that Hawkeye hates being ignored as much as he does. It won’t be long until Hawkeye starts acting out; and sure enough, in the edge of his vision, he sees Hawkeye sit upright, trying to get his attention.

“I didn’t think you had work today.”

“No,” Frank says. “I has some errands in town.”

“But you didn’t let me know.”

“I don’t have to tell you everything.” He looks at Hawkeye, then. “I thought you wouldn’t want to spend time with me, anyway.”

Hawkeye waves his hand. “Bah.” He pats the spot next to him. “Come here.”

Frank had been ready for a fight, but Hawkeye doesn’t seem interested in having one, and so Frank cedes to that decision. Why fight when there’s never a resolution? He approaches Hawkeye, ready to forgive him — how could he not with that sweet grin — but then he notices an odd smell and stuff on the table, a lighter and cigarettes? And—

Frank gasps. “Is that _marijuana?”_

“Be cool about it, Frankie.” Hawkeye grabs his hand, pulls him down onto the sofa with him. “Relax with me.”

“Absolutely not.” That explains Hawkeye’s _mellow_ mood, he’s already a bit blazed. “It’s illegal! Where did you even acquire it?”

“From the beatniks who live downstairs.” Hawkeye flicks on the lighter, puts the flame to the rolled up _stuff_. “You’ve said you wanted me to drink less, so.”

“Yes, but you can go to jail for this.”

“Only if you’re a snitch.” Hawkeye exhales smoke in Frank’s direction. It smells awful. “C’mon.”

“I will not partake.”

“You don’t have to,” Hawkeye says. “Just…just sit with me. Please, Frank? Let’s talk.”

Talking seems just as dangerous.

But they don’t argue. Frank hardly remembers why he was so angry in the first place. He doesn’t approve of the drugs but Hawkeye is less anxious, and he likes that they can have a mostly coherent conversation, unlike when Hawkeye gets hammered and sloppy and mean. Hawkeye does most of the talking — about the news, the design of the sweater he’s knitting, other nonsense. The pot makes Hawkeye loose with his words and he gets touchy, trailing his fingers up Frank’s arm and resting his hand on his knee. Frank thinks he’s in a mood and goes to touch him other places but Hawkeye swats his hand away, says there’s time for _that_ later. Frank tries to take it all in because Hawkeye is rarely this friendly. It’s times like these that Frank believes Hawkeye really does like him, and isn’t with him for convenience or until somebody better comes along.

Eventually, the conversation lands on: the war.

“Nobody understands, you know? Unless they were there.”

“Yeah.” Frank coughs, waves at the smokey haze that hangs between them.

“I’ve only told my dad about it. Some of it,” Hawkeye says. “Either people are afraid to mention it, or it’s all they want to talk about. They all want to hear something terrible. At Christmas, my uncle wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to know if I killed any of _them_. So, I punched him in the middle of the family dinner. Nobody asked me about Korea, after that.”

“You’re crazy,” Frank says, but what he means is: _you’re incredible_.

Hawkeye takes another drag, lets it out.

“I’m sure you don’t mind talking about it,” he says. “Since you’re a such a bigot.”

“I am not,” Frank says. “Just because I didn’t think we should give comfort to the enemy—”

“They were people, too. But your patriotism blinded you to that.” Hawkeye frowns, pokes Frank in the chest. “You liked it there.”

“Not for the reasons you think,” Frank says. “I didn’t like almost getting blown up at least once a week, and I didn’t like all the killing.”

“Then what did you like about it? Was it the rustic lodging? Or perhaps the one-star dining?”

“Because…”

They’ve talked about this before, many times, starting way back to when they first met. Hawkeye will never understand because he never felt like him, like he needed something _more_ in his life.

“I liked the Army because I knew what to expect,” Frank says. “I like orderliness. It makes me feel safe.”

He pauses, thinking Hawkeye will say something, but he just stares at him, so.

“I liked being needed. Even though you said I was an awful surgeon, I was _needed_.” He’d be dragged out of his bunk in the middle of the night, told, _they need you in surgery_. “And for the first time, I met someone who truly understood me.”

”Margaret.”

“Yeah.” Frank sighs. “And when she didn’t love me anymore, you wanted me. Even if you didn’t like me.”

And if he’s being honest, wanting is better than needing.

“Well,” Hawkeye says, “I hated all of it. I’d give anything for all of it to have never happened.”

“All?” He doesn’t say: _but then you wouldn’t have met me._

“It hurts too much. Everyone I met, I have to learn to live without them.”

“They aren’t dead.” Well, except for poor Henry Blake. “They’re just a phone call away.”

“It’s not the same,” Hawkeye says. “And they’re all going to die, eventually.”

He says it very matter-of-fact. If he were drunk instead, he’d probably be weeping by now.

“Is that what has you so rattled?” Frank asks. “That you’re without your friends?”

Without BJ?

“There were terrible things — oh, _God_.” Hawkeye covers his face with both hands, rocks forward. “Why did it have to happen to me?”

Frank doesn’t know what to do when Hawkeye is volatile like this. Instinct wants to try and make Hawkeye feel better, pat his back and tell him nice things, but Hawkeye scorned his affection, so. Maybe he gives it wrong. It doesn’t always come natural to him, since he rarely receives it himself.

But he does know when someone needs it.

He touches Hawkeye’s shoulder. Hawkeye tenses up, but he doesn’t pull away, so Frank presses on.

“You can tell me,” he says. “Please?”

Hawkeye drags his hands down, looks at him.

“It turned me into a version of myself I didn’t recognize,” Hawkeye says. “I made choices that ruined me.”

“Like what?”

And Hawkeye’s hands start to shake and Frank regrets asking when he sees how distraught Hawkeye becomes, but Hawkeye draws in a deep inhale and then exhales slow. Closes his eyes as he starts to tell the story—

“There was this colonel,” Hawkeye begins. “A real piece of work. His unit had the highest casualty rate in Korea. He was proud of it. He took risks, just for the sake of glory. He intended to go back out into the field with his unit and if they all were killed in the process, then so be it. I had to do something. Anything to keep more of those boys from ending up on my table. I had to stop him.”

Frank gasps. “You killed him?”

Hawkeye’s misery is overtaken by bafflement.

“What in the hell, Frank? No, I just… I slipped him a mickey, diagnosed him with appendicitis, cut him open and took out his appendix. He was perfectly healthy but it kept him off the line long enough to lose his command.”

He’s looking for a reaction from Frank, like he wants a confirmation that he’s awful. In Frank’s opinion, it isn’t bad at all.

“You were saving others,” Frank says. “You didn’t hurt anyone.”

“It was wrong. Beej hated me for doing it. We fought about it…” He shakes his head. “It didn’t stop people from getting injured. It was meaningless, like everything else we did there.”

“Not everything,” Frank says. “You saved a lot of lives. That counts.”

“Not enough.”

Hawkeye is always so unfair to himself.

“That isn’t all, is it?” Frank asks, because while it is troubling, he doesn’t think it would push Hawkeye to the point of nearly breaking.

“Just one of the many pieces of me that were chipped away,” Hawkeye says. “I held myself together the best I could but sometimes I remember too much.”

“I understand.” Frank did what he could to survive it, too. “I remember—”

“No. You weren’t _there_.”

That’s what he’s said. Frank doesn’t want to argue, so, he listens.

“You left,” Hawkeye says, “and I hated you for it. I hated that I missed you. I hated you for leaving more than I ever hated you for being there.”

That’s fine. Frank hates himself most of the time, too.

He must not hide his feelings as well as he thinks he does, because Hawkeye _tsks_ at him, says, “Aw, don’t be like that, Frankie. I don’t hate you now.”

Frank thinks only for a second how pathetic it is that a lack of hatred is akin to a declaration of love to him.

He thinks even less about kissing him.

He has to quickly pull away from it because it’s difficult to breathe and he wants to look at Hawkeye…

“What?” Hawkeye asks.

He’d been staring.

“You’re pretty,” Frank tells him, and Hawkeye laughs, which makes him both prettier and not. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re stoned,” says Hawkeye.

“I am not,” Frank says, but he feels kind of odd, but in a good way, and when he searches for some anger or sadness he can’t find a reason to hold onto it. He should be mad at Hawkeye because this is _his_ fault, but every thought of him turns into elation and then he can’t stop giggling—

He decides to just go with it. Be more like Hawkeye.

They do some heavy kissing until Hawkeye declares he’s too hungry to do anything else until he’s fed. Frank makes him what he says is _the most perfect grilled cheese_ and eats it with the preserves from the market. Frank has rarely seen him happier. It’s a welcome change.

Hawkeye smokes the rest of what’s left while they play poker. Frank has never been good at the game because he’s terrible at controlling his facial expressions and he can’t remember all the different card combinations. But the weed makes Hawkeye patient and he tries to teach him, but he can’t really focus. In the end they call it a draw; they were playing with potato chips and they had lost track who was winning because Hawkeye kept eating them.

They finally get around to messing around. Hawkeye lies in the middle of the bed, bare. There’s a bit more flesh on his bones these days, but barely. There’s a softness to his rawboned skinniness. Made to be touched, appreciated. Frank wants to ravish him, but Hawkeye wants it slow. He kisses leisurely, makes a noise in his throat when Frank tries to move it along faster — everything feels so wonderful he wants more and more and more. Hawkeye puts a hand to Frank’s chest, forcing his pace. His eyes are closed, like he’s deeply focused, he draws back and changes the angle as he kisses him again.

“I can’t decide,” Hawkeye says between kisses, “if I want to get fucked, or if I want to fuck you.”

Frank makes a squeaky sound that he assumes Hawkeye will tease him for, but he’s too busy touching him. Hawkeye reaches between them, grips him where he’s hard.

“You’ve got a good dick,” Hawkeye says. “I like this big thing inside me.”

“ _Hawkeye_.” Frank lets out a tittering laugh — he feels only slightly abashed, mostly incited.

“But you have a nice ass, too,” Hawkeye mumbles, and he places his hand on it, right on his rump. “I don’t give it the attention it deserves.”

Frank can only yield to Hawkeye’s persistent touch. He parts his legs so Hawkeye can touch him underneath, his fingers teasing, skimming over his skin.

“Please, Frankie,” Hawkeye asks, and Frank is about tell him he can do whatever he pleases, but then Hawkeye presses at that sensitive place behind his balls that makes his breath go short and yes. Anything.

It’s one thing to fuck a man but it’s another for one to take him. They both prefer the other way around, but once in a while, it’s nice. He likes how Hawkeye makes him feel and he trusts him, and tonight he’s relaxed enough to not second guess what he wants.

Hawkeye kisses him as he settles into it, the slow push of being filled. It’s awkward but it feels good, having Hawkeye with him. It’s horribly intimate. Probably the most intimacy Frank has ever had with anybody. That’s one of the things he likes most about Hawkeye — he’s addicted to affection as much as he is.

*

Hawkeye goes back to the alcohol the next day. Frank doesn’t mind, because Hawkeye is a bit off without it and because he didn’t expect anything to really change.

But something does change after that night. Hawkeye isn’t as cruel to him, but he isn’t deliberately kind either. Frank tries not to read too much into it.

It doesn’t go unnoticed. Like when Frank works a string of night shifts in a row and without asking, Hawkeye flips his schedule so he can sleep with him during the day. Or when he lets Frank pick out the movie they see that week. Or when he kisses Frank’s shoulders and mumbles how he likes his freckles.

Despite all of these pleasant vagaries, Hawkeye is very annoying. He still makes a mess and is a picky eater and doesn’t care if he embarrasses Frank by being too loud in public. He is obstinate, and nine and half times out of ten argues Frank into doing what he wants. One evening, they get caught in a storm downtown because Hawkeye steadfastly objects to taking the bus, and they have to wait in the rain for a taxi instead.

It would be a lot easier to say _no_ to Hawkeye more often if he didn’t always give him that sad puppy-dog look, or promised him things with that awful mouth of his. But it’s Frank fault, too — he likes to please.

*

Frank worries about Hawkeye, more than he has. He drinks more and sleeps more, but he never really rests. He has purplish shadows under his eyes that never go away, and he has an overall aura of _defeat_.

Frank never knows what state Hawkeye will be in when he comes home each day — either Hawkeye will be passed out asleep, hardly moved from where he was when Frank left him that morning, or he’ll be in the middle of one of his _experiments_ (the latest one destroyed the alarm clock because he was trying to make it less shrill).

This is one of the sleeping days. At least today, Hawkeye had made it to the sofa from the bedroom.

Frank quietly sets down his bag and stands, looking down at Hawkeye. He’s curled up because he’s too tall to stretch out fully, and he’s wearing a sweatshirt that says _Bar Harbor, Maine!_ with a cartoon lobster on it and a pair of Frank’s pajama pants. They’re too big for him. A book is on the coffee table with his glasses perched on top, next to it a half-drank cup with something clear — water or gin. Frank takes a sip, testing. He should know better than to question which it is.

He gently touches Hawkeye’s shoulder. “Hawkeye, wake up.”

Hawkeye stirs, his brow wrinkling.

“Not now, Radar,” he mumbles. “I just laid down, I’ve been up all night.”

He can never get away.

Frank kneels next to him. “You don’t have to do anything. You aren’t there anymore.”

Hawkeye opens his eyes, then.

“I was dreaming about there.” _Korea_ , unsaid. “Not a nightmare this time.”

“Good.” Frank brushes back a piece of Hawkeye’s hair that’s fallen on his forehead, apart from the rest. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Frank feels guilty, anyway. How many times has Hawkeye told him, _You don’t know what it was like, you don’t know what it was like to care as much as I do—_

He’s learned to stop arguing about it. It doesn’t change anything. All he can do is be here with him, now.

*

Hawkeye drinks to feel normal, to feel nothing.

There’s no use for Frank to say anything because they’ve argued about it many, many times and if anything, Hawkeye just does it more to spite him. If Frank doesn’t have to work the next day, he’ll join in and have a few, but usually he’s making sure Hawkeye doesn’t do something stupid, reminding him to go to the bathroom, forcing him to eat, being the responsible one and taking away his liquor when he’s reached his limit. It’s not fun to see Hawkeye wrecking himself. Hawkeye gets mad — says Frank is being a _mother hen_ — but Frank doesn’t care because he likes Hawkeye and wants his liver to survive past forty.

It’s one of those evenings where Frank has to discretely cut Hawkeye off. The last time Hawkeye refilled his glass he couldn’t even pour straight, and then he spilled it on himself when he drank it. Frank convinces Hawkeye to go to the bedroom, but Hawkeye has other things on his mind and, well. Frank knows he probably shouldn’t but Hawkeye won’t leave him alone — he slips his hand into Frank’s pants, demands, “ _fuck me_ ,” and…

Frank has slept with Hawkeye when he’s been wasted but never to this extent. His moans don’t sound like the fun kind, and he’s splayed out lax, not helping out at all. Frank is kind of worried Hawkeye might get sick during it. He’d hope that Hawkeye won’t remember this in the morning, but he’s never ashamed of his debauchery. Even though he should be.

It’s sloppy and Hawkeye is having trouble, his erection flagging, and Frank is too worried to really enjoy it himself, so he goes to pull out but Hawkeye goes, “no no no,” and hooks his legs over his thighs and forces him back in. After a few thrusts his dick lifts up again and his breathing goes shallow and his eyes are closed and he’s—

“Hawkeye?” Frank puts his hand on Hawkeye’s chest. “Are you crying?”

“Jus’ drunk,” Hawkeye says. He brings his arms around Frank — it seems like a monumental effort for him — and pulls him close, buries his face into Frank’s shoulder. He’s always more affectionate when he’s in an altered state of mind. Maybe that’s why Frank doesn’t try too hard to make him stop.

*

Hawkeye is predictably ill the next morning. Frank had left him to sleep in, but he doesn’t rest long. Frank is watching television with the volume turned down low when Hawkeye emerges, wearing only his underwear.

“How do you feel?”

Hawkeye groans as an answer and holds his hand to his head as he fumbles in the cabinet for the aspirin. He takes one and then stands with the refrigerator door open as he drinks orange juice directly from the carton before putting it back.

Frank can’t help himself. “That’s what happens when you don’t know your limits.”

“Fuck you,” Hawkeye says in passing as he retreats back into the bedroom.

Humph.

The soap opera ends (which Frank had never cared about until Hawkeye got him invested), and then turns off the television before the next show starts.

Usually when Hawkeye goes off on a bender like the one he went on last night, there is some inciting incident. A disagreement with his dad, a mention on the news of continuing conflict in Korea. Frank can’t think of anything in particular — maybe it was just a rotten day — but then he wonders if it’s related to the letter Hawkeye received in the mail a couple days ago. He tore it open, read it once, and then folded it and shoved it in his pocket. Frank had assumed it was from his dad since he made such a big deal that nobody else knows he is staying, but maybe it was forwarded, from someone else…

Frank doesn’t find that letter — or anything else enlightening — in Hawkeye’s pile of papers that have accumulated on the coffee table. There’s a part of him that knows he could just ask what’s bothering Hawkeye, but there’s the other part that knows Hawkeye would say it was _nothing_.

All the more reason to find out what it is.

Hawkeye is sound asleep, lying on his stomach in the middle of the bed. He doesn’t stir when Frank calls out his name, so Frank takes that as the go-ahead to search through his things. He rummages through the drawer of the bedside table he’s overtaken as his own, but there’s nothing there that would cause him distress (found: several nudist magazines, half-finished crossword puzzles, lubricant and condoms, gum, flask, notepad with the beginnings of a letter to his dad).

Frank drags out Hawkeye’s bag from where he stuffed it in the closet. There isn’t much in it besides heavier winter clothing, but he does find an address book. Frank flips through it. He recognizes a lot of the names. All these people who wanted to keep in contact with Hawkeye, even if he won’t talk to them. Frank is glad, because if Hawkeye was with them he wouldn’t be here, but he can’t help but be jealous. Nobody cared to know Frank longer than they had to, not even Margaret — but Hawkeye has her address, as well as her phone number.

Frank puts it away and gives up looking because now he’s a bit sad, but he hears a rattle and there, hidden at the bottom of the bag under a sweater, is a bottle of pills.

They are prescribed to Hawkeye (or: Benjamin Pierce), and Frank doesn’t need to read the rest to know the drug. He knows enough pharmacology to recognize the capsules.

He can’t believe, but he _can_ — it would explain Hawkeye’s mood shifts and how he sleeps the entire day…

He shakes Hawkeye awake. He isn’t feeling very sympathetic.

Hawkeye sits up quick, squints at Frank. “Wha’s wrong?”

“This.” Frank chucks the bottle at Hawkeye. “You really don’t care, do you?”

Hawkeye picks it up, becomes more alert as he looks at it. He leers at Frank. “You’ve been snooping again, you finky ferret.”

“I don’t regret it,” Frank says. “At least now I’ll know what killed you when I find you dead one morning.”

Hawkeye rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“Pentobarbital? What are you thinking? You know how dangerous barbiturates can be.”

“Don’t lecture _me_ about medicine—”

”You could kill yourself on these with how much you drink,” Frank says, then: “Do you want to die?”

Hawkeye blinks, like he’s taken aback by Frank’s question.

“I don’t take them.” Hawkeye shakes the bottle. “If you want to count them, you’d find that they’re all accounted for.”

It does seem full, and he way Hawkeye says it, Frank believes him.

He sits next to Hawkeye. “Then why do you have them?”

Hawkeye shrugs. “Just in case I need them.”

“Need them for what?”

Frank knows it’s one of those touchy subjects when Hawkeye avoids his gaze.

“I took them for a while when… I had to get off the booze for a while.” He scratches his jaw, looks up at Frank. “I, uh, took these to help me sleep. But I didn’t like them. So, I went back to drinking.”

Not great, but the safer of the two options.

“The prescribing doctor is Freedman,” Frank says. “Is that the same shrink who’d drop in for your poker games?”

“Yes. I’ve talked to him some since I’ve been back. I take a train down to New York, he comes up to see me,” Hawkeye says, overly nonchalant. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is if you’ve been using alcohol as an anesthetic for the last four years.”

“At least I gave a damn, Frank. I didn’t have to stop acting like a human to get through the day.”

“At least I never operated while hungover.”

“Shame. It might have improved your technique.”

“Well, I’m the one who can hold a scalpel without turning into a nervous wreck.”

He knows he’s gone too far — Hawkeye has that _injured_ look about him and Frank was only trying to help but he always makes things worse—

“You know why people don’t like you?” Hawkeye says. “Because you make it impossible. You’re so desperate for someone to like you but they can’t manage it. Every time I believe you might have a shred of decency, you do something to prove it was accidental.”

“And people don’t like you,” Frank says, because if he doesn’t talk he’ll cry or scream or something else, “because you treat everything as a joke, including someone’s affection. Maybe that’s why BJ doesn’t want you and you’re stuck with me, someone who is incapable of loving.”

That hits a nerve. Hawkeye looks as though he’s going to slap him — Frank braces himself for it, but Hawkeye does something worse—

“Get out!”

Frank feels himself tearing up, he tries to reach out to Hawkeye but he lashes out at him—

“Leave!”

And Frank does.

He’s in his car when he realizes that it’s _his_ damn apartment.

*

“Doctor Burns?”

Irene doesn’t close the door on him, so that’s something. He chokes on a _hello_ and he must sound pathetic enough to be invited inside.

He took her home once when it was snowing and her car wouldn’t start, but he didn’t go inside — this was months after she rejected his attempt to get fresh with her. It’s a nice apartment, a bit more spacious than his own and in a better neighborhood. He wonders how she affords it, but then he remembers that she lives with a friend who is a…teacher? Librarian?

Frank sits, takes the water Irene offers. “Thank you.”

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“I…” He doesn’t know. He wanted to talk to someone, and he doesn’t really know anybody else.

“Ah,” she says. “You’re having a spat with your man.”

“He’s not my man,” Frank says, but then realizes what he said. “I mean — what?”

“C’mon, Army.” She smiles at him. “I know that you and Hawkeye are a couple.”

“We’re just—”

“Friends,” she finishes for him. “Sure. He’s just the only person you ever talk about, you light up when he’s around, he touches you way too familiar to be someone who isn’t sleeping with you… I could go on.”

Frank shifts. “You can’t prove it.”

“I don’t have to,” she says. “I know I’m right.”

“How so?”

“Because I have eyes? But really, it’s because I’m the same.”

“You mean—?”

“My friend, Sally,” Irene says, “we sleep in the same bed. Sometimes without clothes.”

“Oh.” That explains a lot. Like: why she didn’t want to go out with him.

Irene leans forward and pats Frank’s knee. “Whatever you two are going through will pass.”

“What if it doesn’t?” He couldn’t get past his issues with Louise, or with Margaret. And Hawkeye once told him they have…what was it? Irreconcilable differences.

“It will,” she says. “Sal and I have our moments, but it’s nothing worth staying angry over. Go home, apologize to him, and move on.”

“I’m not sure he’ll forgive me,” Frank says. “I’m not sure if he even likes me that much.”

“It’s your fault if you don’t know,” Irene says. “You’re too worried that he doesn’t to notice that he does.”

Frank doubts it, but maybe he doesn’t know what to look for.

*

Irene sends him on his way soon after that. He was told to apologize, and he will, right after Hawkeye does…

…but then he sees Hawkeye, and he realizes he’d do anything for Hawkeye to forgive him.

Hawkeye is writing at the table — sitting upright, not keeled over drunk. He looks up at Frank and then back down at his paper.

“What?” Frank is desperate enough to be the first one to give in. They’ve had standstills that have lasted an entire day, both too stubborn to be the one who breaks. “No, _hiya, Frank?”_

“Only if you promise to take it as a threat.”

 _Why did you always get so defensive when we’d greet you?_ Hawkeye asked him a few weeks ago. Frank tried to explain that his niceness was threatening. It was always a set up for a joke.

Frank sits next to him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he sees that Hawkeye hears him; he freezes and looks like _he’s_ the one being threatened.

Frank pushes on, “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He puts his hand over Hawkeye’s — he takes the chance because he’s stupid enough to keep trying. “Don’t ignore me, please talk to me. Please, Hawkeye?”

He’ll wait as long as he needs, but it’s only a moment. Hawkeye turns his hand over in his, brings it to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. Says, “I’m sorry, too,” like he had already made up his mind before Frank asked.

*

And everything is fine, for a while. They still have their fights but it’s nothing too bad that doesn’t resolve on its own.

They spend a lot of time at home. Frank doesn’t like going out after he’s had to work — Hawkeye calls him an _old man_ , even though he’s only four years older. But Frank thinks Hawkeye has learned to love the peace of a night in. Frank cooks something that Hawkeye isn’t suspicious of and will eat without complaining, and then while they watch television Hawkeye rubs Frank’s wrists when they ache after a long stretch of surgery. They have sex most nights. Sometimes twice. Hawkeye lies down with him even if he doesn’t always sleep — Frank will wake up with the other side empty, or Hawkeye will be sitting up, reading. But most of the time, Hawkeye is spooned up against him, resting.

He still has the nightmares.

One evening, Frank thinks he’s having a rare dream about Korea — he hears the shouted warning of, _“Shells!”_ and then the air is knocked out of him.

There’s something heavy on his chest. Or: someone. Hawkeye is lying on him, stretched over his middle.

“Careful,” Hawkeye says, and then holds onto him tighter.

Hawkeye is dreaming, and terrified — Frank feels him trembling against him. Frank’s eyes have adjusted to the dark so he sees how Hawkeye is covering his head with his hands, and Frank realizes: he thinks he’s operating. Hawkeye is shielding him like they would do when their hospital was attacked, using their own bodies as a barrier to keep dirt and debris from falling from the ceiling into their patients. It makes him incredibly sad, for some reason.

And then: Frank thinks he’s falling a bit in love with him.

Frank gently moves him, corrals his long limbs, gets him lying down. Hawkeye mumbles — Frank isn’t sure if he’s awake or not.

“The attack—”

“It’s over,” Frank says. He pats Hawkeye’s chest. “We’re safe.”

“Alright.” Hawkeye snuggles up next to him. “Thanks, Frank.”

Yes. A bit. It hurts.

*

They have dinner with Irene and her partner (Sally, who is a photographer for the newspaper, and dresses like a man). It’s nice to not have to pretend. Frank had been nervous but it’s fine. Hawkeye doesn’t get drunk and he spends most of the evening sitting close to Frank, and he’s _nice_ , for the most part. He tells the story of when he and McIntyre parked a jeep over his foxhole, trapping him, and Frank is mad about it all over again but Hawkeye sweetly kisses his cheek.

“No hard feelings?”

Frank grumbles, kisses him back.

“See,” Irene tells Frank later. “I told you.”

Maybe. Maybe everything will be alright.

*

And then it’s not.

The weather is perfect — sunny, but not too warm, perfectly spring — so they go to the park. They pack a lunch and eat it by the river, and then get ice cream from a cart (Frank gets chocolate and Hawkeye gets the same but with sprinkles). Hawkeye eats his too slow and it starts to melt. His solution is to lick it off his wrist. He’s so sexy that Frank wants to push him into the water.

The fresh air seems to do Hawkeye good. He laughs, tries to engage Frank in a game of tag. He actively participates in conversation with Frank, and everything is fine until Hawkeye comes to a halt.

“What?” Frank looks around. There isn’t anything unusual. Trees, a playground, a couple having a picnic.

Hawkeye shakes his head. “Nothing. Come on.”

He walks fast. Frank has to jog to catch up to him.

“What’s the hurry?”

Hawkeye doesn’t reply. He looks ahead they pass by the playground. It’s busy with a lot of families who came out for the nice spring afternoon. Young teenagers loitering around a tree, kids playing on the monkey bars and going down the slide, a baby crying with its mother in the sandbox—

He stops short again.

“Hawkeye?”

“I’m fine,” he says, but he doesn’t look well — he’s pale, sweating. He swallows thickly, runs a hand through his hair, pulls at the roots. “Can we go?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Frank puts a hand to Hawkeye’s back to try and guide him, but he won’t budge. “Hawk?”

“I’m fine,” he repeats, but he’s looking ahead at nothing, and then his whole body goes rigid and his expression, he looks terrified — his entire aura changed an instant, from sunshine to vacant nothingness. “It was crying and I…she killed it, oh god—”

He’s not really present, like when he’s in the middle of one of his nightmares. A memory, stuck on the same thing, like a skipping record.

Others notice something is wrong. They’re staring. For the sake of Hawkeye’s dignity, Frank tries to move him along but that seems to distress him more. Frank just wants to get him out of there, away, so maybe he’ll snap out of it.

“Had to be quiet or they’d find us.”

“What are you talking about? It’s fine,” Frank says, but Hawkeye is not fine, he’s falling apart in front of him, not making sense—

“No. Can’t forget. Not again.” Hawkeye hits his head with the heels of his hands. “It’s dead.” He looks at Frank. “She killed it.”

“Who? What?”

“It’s quiet.”

“What do you mean?” Frank asks, because there is only noise — screaming of kids, people having conversations around them, a dog barking, traffic, the wind.

“The baby,” Hawkeye says, hushed. “It’s not crying anymore. It’s quiet.”

“What baby?” Frank looks over at the sandbox. “That one? It’s fine. The mother settled it down.”

Hawkeye shakes his head and he’s crying, his eyes watering and tears brimming over.

“You weren’t there,” he says, so softly that Frank can hardly hear him.

“Where?”

“The bus.”

Frank takes Hawkeye’s face between his hands, tries to make him focus. “You’re not there anymore. You’re alright.”

Another tear runs down his cheek. “I remember all of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Frank says, because that’s all he can say.

*

They take a taxi home. Hawkeye lies in the backseat with his head resting on Frank’s lap. Frank doesn’t care what the driver thinks. Hawkeye has calmed down, mostly. He got a bit worse before he was better. After all of… _that_ , he’s exhausted. His eyes are closed but he opens them every few minutes, like he’s making sure Frank is still there, or to keep himself from falling asleep.

Frank puts a hand to his forehead, cards through his hair. Letting him know he isn’t alone.

Hawkeye doesn’t say anything when they’re home. Frank would ask what he’s thinking about, but he doesn’t want to upset him again. He washes his face, changes his clothes because he sweat through them.

There’s a hundred things Frank tries to say but none of them feel right, so he doesn’t say them. He would just be a bother, anyway — he doesn’t understand, or so Hawkeye has said. He doesn’t know what Hawkeye was talking about and he never had a proper breakdown like that but he’s felt like it, on the brink of screaming and sobbing and lying down on the ground.

He doesn’t remark when Hawkeye makes himself a drink, or when Hawkeye drinks it so fast it’s like he’s trying to drown himself with it. Hawkeye catches his gaze and there’s something else painful there.

Hawkeye takes his glass and the bottle with him to the sofa. He makes himself comfortable, crossing one leg over the other as he pours.

“Are you scared of me?”

“No,” Frank says. “I used to be scared of what mean prank you’d do to me. But I’ve never been scared of _you_.”

“You should be.” Hawkeye drinks his second serving slower, sipping it. “I scared the hell out of everyone else.”

“Why?” Frank joins him, sits close. “Tell me.”

Hawkeye rubs his forehead, sighs. Says, “I went crazy.”

Frank snorts. “You were always a bit touched in the head, I thought.”

“Well, I really went off the deep end. Cracked. Wacko.” He pauses. “Committed.”

What was it Frank said once? The last person they have to worry about is Hawkeye Pierce?

But everyone has their breaking point.

“What happened?”

Hawkeye seems reluctant to talk, but once he starts he doesn’t stop, all in a rambling monologue—

”—it was a couple months before the end, there was a ceasefire so we took a bus out to the beach, and oh, it was so beautiful, it was the closest thing to home since I was there. We played volleyball and went swimming and Igor and Klinger tried to catch crabs for us to eat. It was a perfect day. Perfect. I almost forgot where I was and why I was there, it was the last time I felt…the last time I could pretend I was alright.”

Frank listens as it unfolds. Hawkeye sets his drink down so he can use both hands to talk, emphasizing his words. He turns sideways, talks directly to him—

—and then the idyllic sunny day on the beach turns dark and muddled. There’s a bus and hushed quiet and they’re all trapped on the bus and there’s a chicken but it’s not and then and then—

Hawkeye drinks.

Frank holds out his hand for Hawkeye to share. It burns all the way down.

“Say something.” It sounds like a dare. “I talked, now you have to answer.”

What could Frank say? I’m sorry. I get why you won’t step foot on a bus. I knew something was wrong. I can’t ever forget this as you can’t, either. I wish it happened to me instead because I already hated myself a long time ago.

“It isn’t your fault,” he says, because he knows Hawkeye blames himself. He’d blame himself for anything: a rainy day, a heart that stops beating, someone else’s mistake.

“So I’ve been told.” Hawkeye swirls the last of his drink in his glass. “But if I hadn’t said—”

“Then all you could have been killed.”

“Maybe.” He finishes off his martini with a flourish, tipping his head back, and then sets it down, not refilling it. He blinks rapidly, like he’s trying to stave off tears. “That’s what I told myself when it happened. I didn’t think we would get off that bus. But then we made it back. And I… I thought I was fine. It was just another horror of the war. I was okay, because Hawkeye Pierce is always _okay_ ready with a joke. But then I had a nervous breakdown in the O.R., I refused to anesthetize a patient because they’d be smothered.”

“Oh…”

“And the next day, I drove a jeep through the officer’s club,” Hawkeye says. “Allegedly. I still don’t remember doing that. But then Sidney was called in and he deemed me _loco_. I did not go willingly. Beej and Klinger had to hold me down while I was sedated. Margaret cried like I was dying. I _felt_ like I was dying.”

Frank wants to cry for him, too. That he wasn’t there. That he understands better than Hawkeye would ever realize.

“I’m still not sure how long I was in the psychiatric hospital,” Hawkeye says. “The first few weeks I was furious. I was left to stare at a wall all day when I could be at the unit saving lives. So what if I was a bit sad? Wasn’t everyone? I thought they were trapping me there. Locked in a room that I could cross in three strides and had bars on the window so I couldn’t jump out. I was adamant I didn’t belong there. The kid in the room across the hall from me who screamed day and night about foxholes did. Not me. But that’s what the other patients said. Turns out I was crazier than I thought, because I didn’t remember what happened. On the bus. I made myself forget. But then I remembered, and now I get nervous when I’m around babies and little kids, and when they cry I feel sick but what’s worse is when they…they…”

“Go quiet.” Like in the park.

There’s a brief moment where it looks like Hawkeye might breakdown again, but he takes a deep breath and it passes. It seems practiced.

“I was sent back to the four-oh-seven-seven because it was best for me to confront my fears,” Hawkeye says, “but I wasn’t ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay, because it wasn’t just that night on the bus, it was everything. I came home and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. All the death, the fear. I couldn’t operate without anticipating bombs to rattle the windows. I couldn’t talk to anyone because they made me feel bad that I didn’t feel better. I was home two months before I had to go back into the crazy house. Except I admitted myself, this time. And do you know what I kept thinking about?”

Frank doesn’t know but he’s certain Hawkeye is going to tell him.

“I thought: I wonder what Frank Burns is doing.” He laughs, uncontrolled, like he does when he’s amused at his own joke. ”That’s when I knew I had truly lost it, because the only person I wanted to talk to was you.”

“Me?” Frank hopes he doesn’t sound as hopeful as he feels. “Why?”

“Because,” Hawkeye says, “for some godforsaken reason, I found consolation with you in Korea. I thought maybe…I don’t know. You’re the loneliest person I’ve ever met. I thought you’d understand.”

Frank _does_ understand, he’s been trying to tell him—

“Did you ever think of doing it?”

“Doing what?” asks Hawkeye.

“Killing yourself.”

Hawkeye blinks, and good — Frank was able to unsettle him.

“No,” he replies. “I’ve always been too much of a coward.”

 _Me too_ , is what Frank knows he should say.

“When I came home, I was put under observation.” Frank tells it like a story. It feels like one. “They told me I was suffering from battle fatigue. I wasn’t, but I didn’t know how to tell the doctors I was depressed because I would rather be back over there. That would prove I was crazy. But then Louise brought the divorce papers while I was still in the hospital and, um. Don’t say you’re going to kill yourself while you’re under psychological evaluation.”

He wishes Hawkeye would laugh. But he looks at him too concerned. “But you didn’t mean it, right?”

Frank shrugs. He’s thought about it, but not so much thinking of carrying it out.

“Regardless, it was taken seriously,” Frank says. “I was strapped down to the bed and they shoved pills down my throat. Asked every day, _have you had thoughts about harming yourself?_ Who wouldn’t in a place like that?”

“Yes.” Hawkeye would know, out of anyone.

“I was all alone. But it gave me time to think.” So much thinking. “When I was free, I didn’t even try to reconcile with Louise. I didn’t want to. Which was just as well, because she already had my things packed. So, I said goodbye to my kids and haven’t seen them since.”

“Why not?”

“She won’t let me,” Frank says, and he’s trying not to cry, he hates crying, but his voice trembles and his vision blurs and he’s so tired of trying to be _okay_. “I talked to them on the phone at Christmas but that’s it. I know I deserve it because I was a bad father. I have nothing. I could die and nobody would care.”

Silence, then Hawkeye says: “I would.”

“Really?”

“I’d be real mad if I came halfway across the country and you weren’t here.”

“Jerk,” Frank says, but Hawkeye laughs and pulls him into a tight hug. Frank leans into him without hesitation, and he thinks: I do have this.

“I did mean it,” Hawkeye says, confesses, mumbled against his neck. “I missed you.”

Frank pulls away from him, asks, “Really?”because he wants to hear it again.

“I kept hoping you’d write me,” Hawkeye says. “But you never did.”

“Wait,” Frank tells him and he goes to get the stack of letters he shoved to the back of his sock drawer so Hawkeye wouldn’t find them. All of them addressed: _Cpt. B. F. Pierce, MASH 4077, Korea_.

“Mail call,” Frank says, handing them over. Hawkeye flips through the stack — there must be at least thirty. Frank intended to send them, at the beginning. He wrote the first one while he was put away, once they let him have a pen and paper. He was too nervous to send it but he wrote another one anyway, and then another. He started writing things he wouldn’t risk the sensor reading ( _I miss your mouth on me_ and _I wish we would’ve sat next to each other during movie night_ and—) and he never stopped thinking of him.

Hawkeye reads one from the middle of the stack. Frank doesn’t know what the letter contains, but he supposes it has something sad because Hawkeye looks distraught. Frank feels bad for worrying him, and he’s about to apologize but Hawkeye carefully folds the letter, puts it back into the envelope.

“I’m going home,” Hawkeye says.

“Oh.” Something that healed inside him breaks again. “Right. Of course.”

“I always was going to go back. But what do you think about Maine?”

_What?_

“You should come with me,” Hawkeye says, and his attempt at being casual is not very good. “If you want.”

“Why me?” Frank asks. “I’m not who you want.”

“Don’t tell me what I want.”

“But I can’t compare to BJ,” Frank says. “I read what you wrote about him. That you shouldn’t want him because it would never work, that you’re afraid to tell him because it would change things…”

Hawkeye sighs.

“That letter was about you, you dumbass.”

“ _Me?”_

“Yes,” Hawkeye says, terse. “I was writing to Sidney, because I didn’t know what to do about my big, stupid fondness for you.”

“And he said?”

“That he doesn’t do relationship counseling.”

He’s trying to be funny, like he always does when things are too real. Frank wishes the psychiatrist gave him instructions of what to do, because he doesn’t know, either.

Maybe there isn’t an answer.

“He did suggest to be honest with you,” Hawkeye says. “Yes. I love Beej, even if I’m not talking to him currently for various reasons. We’ll both get over it and we’ll pick up where we left off.”

“I know.” Frank knows Hawkeye loves BJ. He thinks they’ve loved each other since the moment they met.

“But it isn’t like you think,” Hawkeye continues. “He’s my best friend. That’s all.”

“And me?” Frank needs to know where he stands with him. He can’t lose again.

“I’ve told you,” Hawkeye says. “Big, stupid fondness.”

Well.

“Everything I own can fit in my car,” Frank says. “I can leave tomorrow.”

He has nothing to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and here we are, at the end! There's going to be one last part where idiot surgeons are in Maine.
> 
> "What do you think about Maine?" is absolutely a Band of Brothers reference.
> 
> Regarding Frank's suicidal ideation: I based this off canon. I know it's played as a joke in the show, but there are many times he says things that can be taken with a raised eyebrow. Such as him saying he'll hurt himself if his wife doesn't take him back, he says he'll put his head under a jeep when he thinks Margaret is with Tuttle, and says "you'll be sorry when I'm gone" when his command is taken away, etc. Just. something to think about.
> 
> Thank you everyone for the support, all the such nice comments. I'm 😳 honestly. Thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me @acanofpeaches on tumblr about mash


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